Episode Eight: Earthfall: Sledgehammer
by Errationatus2
Summary: "Plans are what we have when we control a situation. Crichton is what we have when we don't." - Ander Daranderhel, aka Haxer, of the pirate vessel "Vengeance". Rated M for language, violence, and mature themes.
1. Chapter 1

_Like a fella once said, "Life is what happens when you're having fun." So it has gone for me. Apologies for those following this series of mine for the bloody long wait between the last and this. It's not as much as I would have liked, but I hope to have more up in a far more reasonable time. I felt I owe those still reading at least something._

_Thanks for reading, and as always, feel free to comment._

_Standard disclaimers apply. I own nothing Farscape but my own inventions therein - everything else is Henson & CO's._

* * *

**FARSCAPE**

**_UNREALIZED REALITIES:_**

**THE FREEBOOTER ERA**

**Previously, on **_**Farscape**_**:**

_Scorpius has arrived. The Monitor, a autonomous watch station of the Ancients buried in Earth's Moon two billion years ago, has been manipulating events as it gathered information, only to be attacked and disabled by Scorpius' Carrier. Peacekeeper troops instantly assault NORAD and Area 51 – and the War for the Wormhole has begun..._

**AND NOW, ON FARSCAPE: **_**THE FREEBOOTER ERA**_**:**

**SLEDGEHAMMER:**

**ROCK THE CASBAH**

* * *

_To hope is the first sign that you've lost your grip on reality._

- found in the _Vael'lath_ War Tome of N'sharrast, attributed to the _Kha'jhav_

* * *

**PROLOGUE**

**HIS COMM CRACKLED, AND THEN WENT SILENT.**

All Crichton could hear was his suit creaking, the slow, near-silent hiss of air escaping from... somewhere. He checked his HUD. Nope, pressure steady. Then he realized that that hissing sound was his open comm picking up stellar noise, and he listened for a little while, to the sound of the universe chattering, shut it off. It had nothing to say that he wanted to hear.

Now just the creaking of his suit, and his own breathing. In the distance - flashes, the destruction - he trusted - of a few ambitions, some twisted dreams and hopes.

Maybe some of them could have been his, but he didn't let it trouble him. All the right people were angry, all the deserving people had got what they deserved, and everyone else got what he'd felt like giving them, so for the most part, things had gone as he'd wanted – more or less, there was a glitch here and there, and it wasn't perfect, but, all things considered it turned out rather well.

Well... except for this last bit. He was floating further and further away, and his suit was pretty fried, or so the onboard damage report told him: comm could only receive, actuators were locked, so he couldn't move, air supply an arn. He really should have checked to have made sure the damn thing had been fully charged. Oh, well. No atmosphere this time, no plunge and happy coincidences.

There was a huge flash in the distance, that ballooned out and out until he thought it might reach him, then it abruptly extinguished itself. Unlike TV and the movies, any non-nuclear explosion in space quickly dissipated. Crichton nodded to himself, set his visor to opaque, smiled crookedly at his own reflection on the inside of the plate. He was in a black suit against the blackness of space with no locater beacon and an arn of air, drifting at a rather decent clip away from all the activity. It wasn't _his_ suit, but it was the same kind and it had served him so well and would serve him one last time as an armored coffin to bear him eternally through space.

He liked it. Drift into legend, the body never found, like King Arthur: out there somewhere, just waiting to rise again. He laughed softly to himself.

_Yeah, sure. Gone, damned and forgotten. _The Creature leaves without a fuss. They were better off.

Why not? There was a certain kind of symmetry to that he liked. He was tired, so very tired. He slept but never rested.

He told his suit to power down to bare reserves, scanned again for leaks and did the only thing he could in this situation.

He closed his eye and went to sleep, for the first time in a long time feeling as if – at last – rest might come.

It was over.

* * *

**I**

**TIME RAN OUT.** Close on the heels of his attack on the Monitor, Scorpius had launched several waves of Prowlers and Marauder troop transports at Earth, and they hit Cheyenne Mountain like a fist. It was a precision strike and everyone except Crichton wondered how he knew where to strike first. Crichton had his suspicions as to the hows.

_The neural chip. _ Harvey had surmised. _Among other things. _

He'd explained long ago that he – meaning Harvey backed up by the chip – had spent his time in that form scanning Crichton's brain for all it was worth. "Reciprocity", he'd called it wryly. So, there was no wonder in Crichton's mind as to how and why, but he didn't care enough to tell anyone and certainly had no desire to explain it. As the "War Room" exploded around him, and he'd stepped a few steps back to observe. He had zero interest in what they were going to do about Scorpius. He had his own plans for that bastard. He needed to find Shiv and get the frell off this rock.

There was no frontal assault of troops. Two Frag Cannon shots had sheared the face of the mountain off the base, and soldiers in "drill tubes" - armored troop carriers equipped with plasma "bores" on their noses - had been launched at the base and had burned their way through rock, concrete and steel to disgorge Peacekeepers directly into the base.

If the troopers had expected easy pickings they were quickly disabused of that conceit. Tungsten-coated bullets of the base's security and marines and the depleted-uranium slugs of the internal auto-defences decimated the first wave – but succeeding ones began pushing their way out into the base, and humans began to die.

"_Find Crichton_!", had been Akanke's first order, followed by trying to organize the chaos and mount a defence. Crichton had managed to back off to one of the war room's heavy doors just as his comm chirped.

_ "Hey, Boss. You know you've got big heaps of trouble headed your way?"_

"Already here. Where the frell are you?" Aeryn had noticed, but she made no move to say anything. She just watched him, and he wished she wouldn't – shouldn't she be hunting for Johnny? Things had gone straight to Hezmana a little faster than he'd planned, cursed to himself.

_ "I, ...uh... went kinda farhbot there for a smidge," _Haxer told him. _ "The Monitor was in my head pretty good." _Silence for a moment, and Crichton could just make out Chak'sa's voice, muffled, as if Hax had put his hand over the comm. _ "I guess Cha was kinda deep in it too. We're in orbit."_ There was a pause, and then a sheepish follow-up. "_We'd come and get you, but the stealth systems are kinda fried, thanks to a _very_ subtle code bomb Miriya left behind, one I can't believe I missed and am totally going to steal - and Cha says there's about two hundred and fifty Prowlers and about that many Marauders coming your way. We're heading to the southern pole to hide until we can get the stealth fixed. Sorry. We'll be there as soon as."_

Crichton growled out a sigh.

"Right. Figures." Crichton noticed Akanke looking back at him and waving at a couple of MP's. One appeared to be speaking into his radio. "Do what you have to, just get it done, be ready. Send me one of the Wing Fighters on remote. Now will do. Drop it somewhere close, but not too close. I'll have to risk it." He looked steadily at Akanke, thought,_ Don't set precedents, lady. _

_ "You got it. There's an area about two motras on a heading of Relka 595. It's a decent-sized depression, heavily forested. Should hide it well. I'll have to send it the long way to avoid any forward active scans."_

Almost three klicks due west from the base. Not great but better than nothing. It'd be tight.

"Fine. It'll do. We'll play it by ear."

_ "Two quick things – Lamm ran for it – to Scorpius. We tracked her ship straight to him." _Yeah – limp back to the kennel. See you again one day, Sweetheart.

"Frell her. Next?"

_ "Next - we're not risking any actives scans, but it appears both Moya and Talyn have run for it."_

"They're the frelling smart ones. " Crichton eyed the MP's who was heading his way. Where, he wondered, were Heavy D and Chi?

"Somehow I doubt they've run that far." He paused, looked over at Sun. She apparently just noticed the MP's vectoring toward him. "Chak'sa – break out Synwynd's little gift and get it ready. " At her affirmative, he closed with, "I've gotta pretend I give a damn." He closed his comm.

Aeryn raised a hand to protest just as Crichton casually pulled a pistol. The MP's slowed, looked at Akanke. She nodded. They came on. Crichton sighed to himself, crossed to the Director, jabbed his pistol into the back of Akanke's neck. The MP's stopped.

"Lady," Crichton told her. "You and your men can commit suicide any way you want, but 'Death By Crichton' has become a little too common for my liking, so why don't you just cut this crap and play smart?"

Unfazed - and damned if Crichton didn't admire her for it – she simply asked,

"Do you have any recommendations?" She waved her hand at the monitors that showed Peacekeepers and Marines battling.

Crichton snorted his appreciation and nodded.

"Where's John?"

"At last report, he and your crew member were in maintenance bay 112A. We lost contact with them twenty minutes ago." As if on cue, a disgruntled John and a smiling Miriya were escorted running into the room. Shots splashed against the steel-cored door. Let the PK's straight to them. _Figures._

"Son of a _bitch_!" John yelled as the door slammed behind them. "This as bad as it seems?"

"It will soon be worse," Akanke told him, calmly nodding.

"This base can't hold out against them. I am not going into the damn tomb, so we'd better figure out how the hell I'm – _we're - _getting out of here."

"There is a lot of disorganization, ma'am," a tech told her. "We've got reports coming in from all over the base of personnel not being anywhere they should be. They are rallying, but the invaders are starting to take a toll."

"The Monitor," Crichton muttered. "I had thought it was just us."

"Apparently not." Akanke overheard him, waved the MP's away. "Do you mind?"

"Don't do it again." Crichton told her, with a slight tap with the barrel of the pistol to remind her.

"Sound the evacuation alert. Tell all non-essential personnel to get out by any means necessary. We need to hold them until we can get everyone out."

"No." Crichton corrected her. "Shut everything down, tell everyone to stand down and offer no resistance. Surrender. Broadcast it."

"Excuse me?" There was a general consternation. Only Aeryn and Miriya nodded, he noted.

"They only want _John_. You resist troopers who will not hesitate to slaughter everyone in this base, and they'll do just that. On the plus side, and I can't believe I'm calling it that, we're dealing with Scorpius, not your average Peacekeeper captain. He'll be reasonable – as far as that goes."

John had marched up to him by then. The pulse shots were ramping in intensity.

"Are you nuts? Scorpius _reasonable_?! _This is a goddamn disaster_! Just what the _hell_...?" Crichton gave him a look of withering contempt, cut him off, directing it to Akanke.

"All you can do is try and mitigate damage. Scorpius only wants John and his head." He jabbed a hard finger against John's temple, who winced, stepped back. "Those troopers are here to seize anything Scorpius thinks John will have had a hand in. Let them ransack the place – trust me, you have nothing technical they want and your 'secrets' are meaningless. You offer no resistance and they'll have no need to kill any more personnel."

"These are _Peacekeepers_ we're talking about here!" John interjected. "The soldiers here can..."

"They can martyr themselves for you some other time." John scowled, but shut up, realizing what he had been about to advocate, and stepped back, fuming. Crichton's comm chirped again. _The frell...?_

_ "Crichton. I am free and mobile."_ Hot frelling damn. Shiv. _"Give me your location, and I shall endeavour to join you."_

"I'm in their idea of command. Did you kill that Peacekeeper?"

There was a moment, possibly Shiv wondering how he knew. She was far too practical to let it bother her for long, though.

_ "No. I will explain later. I also have a Stykera who insists on accompanying me."_

"Let him. No doubt you're aware this base is currently under attack. There are floor maps and routes on the walls all over this place. I'm in the room marked 'D4'. I expect you here ten minutes ago. Do what you have to, just get here. We'll fight our way out."

"_Acknowledged."_

"Shouldn't we be leaving?" Aeryn asked, casually. She watching John and Miriya, as if studying them. Miriya was watching Crichton.

"There's an idea!" John agreed. "I vote for _now_."

Crichton wasn't finished however. Aeryn found herself admiring his calm. She could neither see nor sense any anxiety around him at all. John, she noted, was sweating profusely. As for herself, she felt her nerves vibrating, anticipatory, a call to action sorely missed.

"Wipe anything he put in any of the computers. Plans for everything even remotely wormhole-related – including the stuff you were planning without him." Crichton smiled crookedly. "No point in making it too easy."

"This _is_ a disaster, isn't it?" Akanke asked him. "Earth will tear itself apart if he invades more than this base."

"It's not a disaster yet." Crichton told her, turning as walking calmly toward the exit, stopped in the doorway. "And he _is_ invading – if he doesn't find what he wants. Earth has to grow up sometime. Remember one thing: Scorpius is smarter than you, but he admires sense, the more ruthless it is, the better." In his head, Harvey nodded. He smiled half-a-smile at her. "Stay calm, play it smart, and tell the truth. Well, as near to it as you can get. It'll save you, if anything will."

As he stepped out, Shiv, Stark and Menshaf turned a corner at a trot. John, Miriya and Aeryn followed him.

Crichton looked back at Akanke, glanced at a fuming and still-silent General Williams sulking in a corner, a red phone to his ear.

"Fight the fights you can win."

"And if I lose them all?" Akanke asked with a sigh. It was rapidly becoming too much of a possibility. Nothing was more frustrating than losing a battle before it had even really been joined. He knew how that felt.

"Do what I do," he replied, slap-checking his coat. He directed his companions to move on.

"Which is what?"

"Keep fighting."

He followed them out the door.

* * *

**IN THE CORRIDOR,** he hurried them along.

"This went fezzik'd in a hurry," Miriya muttered.

"Has it?" Crichton wondered. "For whom, exactly?" Miriya frowned at him, said nothing further.

"Where _are_ we going?" Aeryn asked, her stride steady.

"I have a ship coming. An A101- _Nimah_." Aeryn nodded. She knew that designation: _Veddik_-class Vigilante Wing Fighter. Armed heavily, extremely agile, and she could fly one in her sleep. It had definite possibilities.

"Everyone that doesn't have 'em should grab a gun on the way out. You'll need 'em. Base specs say there's a weapons store by the main security checkpoint."

Crichton looked down for Shiv - whom it seemed as a natural occurrence was at his side. Behind her the "Peacekeeper". Without preliminaries, she said,

"This is Thadon No'Halladan. He is Thantados, like myself. A Blade Mage." Crichton looked him over. He nodded at Shiv's Captain. The guy looked nothing like a Thantados.

"Helluva disguise." Thadon just nodded. "Gotta admire your persistence." Behind them it seemed as if the pulse shots were continuing. They weren't, for the moment, getting any closer.

"It got me here. It was a genetic modification and necessary. I have taken the catalyst to reverse the alteration, as it is no longer needed. It should take about three arns." Shiv nodded at that. She did not like his current appearance. Crichton looked back at Shiv.

"Nice to see you. You look good. Feel alright?" She gave him a short nod. "_This_ the asshole who tried to kidnap you?" She blinked, silently admired his deductive reasoning, looked at Thadon. Crichton stopped, nodded to the armoury as they passed. John, Miriya and Stark went in. John took a moment to explain the particulars of Human ballistic weapons to them.

"Yes, to all." The slightest of smiles ghosted her lips. Thadon was watching them. He did not like her seeming-casual relationship to the pirate. She stood too close to him, her body language far too relaxed for his liking.

"Hey, Stark – still with us?" Crichton asked as Stark returned, a shiny Desert Eagle .50 calibre pistol in his hand. A nod and a smile from the Stykera. He seemed calmer and more self-possessed since his encounter with the Monitor. _Every little bit helped_. John had slung an SCAR-H combat rifle over his shoulder and jammed a Kimber-ICQB into his belt. Miriya was carrying a similar pistol and two HK MP5's. She handled them like a pro. That was both a nice thing and an annoyance about her, Crichton thought. She was a damn quick study.

Crichton nodded slightly to himself. This could work after all. Folks would soon be very angry with him, but The Plan was The Plan. He almost laughed out loud.

"Damn." Crichton told her, glancing quickly at Thadon and then back at her, and she did not miss it. He leaned in with a smile. "Smart women are _seriously_ sexy."

"Where will this ship be?" Thadon asked pointedly, his dislike of what Crichton had said obvious. _ Jealousy from Thantados? Not typical then. _

"Shiv – These boys are definitely Scorpius', and the tricky bastard's running a full Carrier. Intel was definitely wrong on complement." Ignoring Thadon. "Got a ton of ships and many more troops on the way." She nodded, finding herself oddly enough _enjoying_ Thadon's discomfort. "This planet won't last two hours, simply because it'll go nuts, and do most of the damage to itself by itself."

"Understood. What can be done?"

"What's necessary." He said, his smile fading. She nodded, not knowing the particulars, but willing to follow his lead. Shiv turned her fire-eyes to Thadon.

"You will assist us," she told him.

"Of course."

"The _Vengeance_?" She asked.

"Hax and Cha are on it. She took some damage. He says ASAP. We'll see."

"This has been a very bad day, so far" Aeryn said behind him, John and Miriya behind her. She directed the next to Crichton. "Are you as confident as you're putting forth?"

"You'd better hope I am." A smirk for Shiv Aeryn did not see.

She sighed. "You're not helping." Crichton just shrugged. It was done so casually, with such utter indifference, she was honestly surprised by it. She simply couldn't read him, and that irritated her to no end. Time may walk on, but Crichtons didn't change _that _radically. _Why then, _she started to wonder to herself,_ did _this one_ get under her skin so readily? _

What troubled her more was how readily the Crichton behind her irritated her even more profoundly.

"Sure I am." A smirk. "He _was_ warned." A thumb jerked to the man behind her.

Aeryn sent him a steely gaze.

"Are you gloating?"

"Hardly. Might when I win though. Haven't won yet."

"Will you?"

Crichton sent her a cold gaze.

"I'd better."

Behind them came Akanke's voice on the PA telling the base to surrender.

* * *

**THEY WERE OUTSIDE **just as the first Marauders dropped to the ground. Overhead, a dozen Prowlers tore across the sky. In the distance they could see approaching specks. Fighter planes.

_They'll get slaughtered_, Crichton thought to himself. He and his companions were inching along an outside wall when a Prowler suddenly detonated into a bright ball of orange, a Hellfire missile slamming into it from five miles away.

..._Or maybe they'll give 'em a decent fight._ Crichton amended. He wished them luck, and turned his attention back to saving his own hide. The roar of Marauders was deafening. They'd made it off the base and were pell-melling it on foot toward the surrounding forest when they were spotted. Shots chased them, followed by soldiers. Crichton knew the only edge he had currently was a still-living John and his functioning brain.

"Don't stop!" Crichton yelled. "That way!" He skidded to a stop as the rest raced past him. He fired a few shots to keep his pursuers interested. A moment later, he was diving for the ground as a fusillade answered him.

"Yeah, that's expected," he muttered to himself as pulse-made gravel rained down. He was up and running again, only a minute behind his companions. They'd made the trees. Crichton stopped again long enough to try and count his opposition. Frell. At least thirty on foot, and several vehicles dropped by the Heavy Marauders. Damn it. At least two klicks to go, and it was all _frelling uphill_.

Crichton caught up, brought them all to a quick halt. He pointed further up the treed slope.

"We're gonna split up. Shiv and I will move cross-slope and hope we can draw enough off you to get you to Relka 595 before they arrive in force." He saw Miriya, Aeryn, Shiv and Thadon all look in roughly the right direction. John was taking their word for it. Stark had slipped back into his customary anxious face. "With any luck at all, there'll be a ship there by the time we arrive."

"I am not leaving Shiv." Thadon insisted, and Crichton just shook his head.

"Guard them," Shiv ordered him.

"I have come a very long way..." he began to protest, but sudden pulse fire blazed at them, so intense they scattered. A solid beam sliced through tree and rock like they were made of paper. Crichton roared at them to run.

Dodging in and out of trees, slipping and climbing, they managed, barely, to keep ahead of the Peacekeepers. Hunkering down behind a large outcropping of boulders, Crichton sucked in heavy breaths and realized that not just Shiv had accompanied him – _Aeryn Sun_ panted in a shadow not far away. Shiv looked no worse for wear, nor was she breathing heavy. Some days, Crichton mused, he was just a little jealous of that lady. He must have scowled or something because Aeryn wiped her face and told him,

"It wasn't my idea." She spat dust. "That was a Ventar Cannon, plasma-based. It's going to make things very tricky." They could hear footsteps clatter downslope. Crichton edged his eye up, took a quick look.

"Damn. At least a dozen down there." He contemplated, decided. "Shiv - we need at least some of these bastards off our backs, and running away from John and the others. If you and your new boyfriend wanna team up for it, I wouldn't say no." He rubbed a patch of raw skin on the back of his hand, a result of spillage from that cannon. Another close call. "Guns are just gonna give us away." He nodded behind them as ballistic gunfire rang out in the distance. "Case in point."

Shiv pulled two blades from her cuirass, fashioned them into wickedly pointed long daggers.

"I shall attempt to expedite matters." She disappeared, sliding into the shadows of the rocks. His comm chittered twice, and he knew by that signal that the Wing Fighter had found him and was on its way. That was the good news. Downslope, he heard Peacekeepers scream and shout, and knew Shiv was at work. He heard Aeryn adjust her position behind him. He glanced back at her. She was staring at him again. Shots were still shattering rocks and setting the odd tree ablaze. The Ventar Cannon tore up the slope a few motras from them.

"What?" he asked, tired of being stared at - "Say it already."

Aeryn blinked, unaware he'd noticed.

"I just wanted to say that..." she hesitated. It was one thing to say it in your head, but to have him a motra from you was something else. She amended what she was going to say, said instead, "...that I apologized to everyone on Moya. I tried to apologized to Talyn, but..."

"He's young yet." Nice cover.

"Pilot told me what you did for them..."

"I didn't do anything of relevance." He heard the clatter of feet approaching their temporary shelter. A glance showed him Stark and Miriya. In the distance, Thadon and Shiv escorted a limping John. She said nothing, he noticed, about apologizing to _him_. He certainly didn't expect one.

Aeryn tried a smile.

"I know what you did. It was a very Crichton thing to have done." Crichton blinked once, and his face hardened. Stark and Miriya dropped into the cover just as shots began to pepper the slope again.

"I would have thought the Crichton thing to have done was run away." He growled, standing and motioning them to follow him. Aeryn opened her mouth, shut it. Yes, the wrong tack to have taken with him. Crichton grabbed Miriya. "Go and swap places with Shiv, the rest of you follow me."

Without waiting, he broke from cover, sending a few shots downslope. Aeryn followed suit, Stark seemingly forgetting he had a gun. Shiv seemingly appeared at Crichton's side. His comm chittered again. The Wing Fighter was only a few hundred microts away. Behind them, the shots were getting closer and he heard John yell for them to "move it", and Crichton smirked to himself. The crunch of heavy vehicles got louder and a Marauder circled overhead. A few seconds later, it took two hits from what Crichton was sure was the Wing Fighter, and careened out of sight. There was no explosion. Behind them, Thadon grunted and fell, his shoulder smoking from a pulse blast. He scrambled back to his feet, only to be hit a second time. A tree behind him exploded from a round from a troop transport. Shiv glanced at Crichton and Thadon cursed.

"Get him," he told her, and swore he could see relief in her eyes. And annoyance, which made him grin to himself, and she fell back. Thadon was gonna find her one serious nut to crack.

Miriya took a shot in the arm, cursed, and killed the Peacekeeper who had shot her. Shots kicked up dirt all around her, but she managed – barely – to stay ahead of them. Next to her, John tried to grab her arm and force her to run, but she shook him off and yelled at him to get moving himself. They were losing ground to the others, behind by several motras easily. Crichton bounded over a large rock just a blast hit it, shattering it to pebbles, the shockwave kicking him to the ground and rolling him into a tree. Aeryn skidded to a halt beside him, just as the welcome site of the A101-_Nimah_ roared overhead, an auto-cannon causing Peacekeepers to scatter for cover. One shot disabled the closest vehicle.

Crichton shook the fuzz from the impact he took and hauled himself to his feet.

"You fly one of those?" He asked her as the _Nimah_ began to land.

"In my frelling sleep," she huffed at him, to his nod. He pushed her toward it, shoved Stark after her.

"Activation code 313 Nouka 313 – it's been modified with heavier engines, bigger cannon, weight's different." Aeryn nodded, and he waited as Aeryn and Stark ran on, and Shiv and a wounded Thadon caught up. "We'll repair him in the ship – go!"

About three meters to the rear, John and Miriya were running to catch up. He nodded once to himself, followed the rest. Shots began to explode around them as the realization that they might escape dawned on the Peacekeepers. Aeryn had the Nimah growling into launch and hovering just above the ground as Crichton hit the hatch. He turned in the hatchway, saw that John was in the lead, Miriya just behind, about a metre away. Plumes of dirt and rock were exploding everywhere, and shots were beginning to ricochet off the ship. Crichton frowned.

"A Crichton thing to have done," he muttered. John was almost in reach. Crichton smiled at him...

...and drove a heavy boot into John's chest, just as he'd reached the door. John was so surprised he didn't make a sound until he ploughed into an even-more-surprised Miriya close behind him, sending them both flying back.

He stepped inside, and the hatch slammed shut. He gestured at Shiv, who told Sun to take off – and unknowingly, Aeryn 'hit the accelerator' and they were knifing into the sky.

"All the bullshit and none of the perks." he growled.


	2. Chapter 2

**DOWN BELOW,** Cheyenne Mountain was a smoking ruin. Peacekeepers were in control most definitely, and by the time he and Miriya had been returned to the base proper, a sleek Marauder was landing – Nerada Lamm's Marauder - and John's most dreaded nightmare was gazing calmly from it. His chalky face angled itself into a sharp smile, and Scorpius stepped his first step onto John's homeworld.

John, his rage almost palpable, did his best to keep his wits about him. Around he and Miriya were pointed about fifty pulse weapons, and John they weighed down with restraints, and locked him into a sack that they cinched with ruthless efficiency over those just to be sure. He couldn't move, was dragged to Scorpius like a a pig in a poke.

Betrayed. It was the only word he could think of – _betrayed_. John needed no further proof that his doppelganger was no real Crichton. He choked down his rage and forced himself to think.

Miriya was far calmer than he thought she should have been. Wasn't she just unceremoniously dumped as well? Scorpius waved her and her escort away when he stepped up to them, and she and her guard vanished. Behind him, John could see Akanke, Williams and a few others also in restraints.

"Ah... John. How good to see you again." Scorpius smiled his vicious smile. "Your memories did not do this planet justice."

"_Fuck_ you, Scorpius." John spat from the ground. Scorpius waved two troopers over, who hoisted him up and held him between them while one snapped a device around the sack, activated it. John felt himself floating as the troopers stepped away.

"Unlikely." He stepped even closer. "It would serve you much better to accept this inevitability and give up this stubbornness. I assure you – I will not hesitate to destroy this planet, a city at a time, if necessary – for every microt you so foolishly deny me."

John only glared, but he knew the truth of that statement.

"You _have_ lost. But it need not be a catastrophic loss. I only want your assistance – I have no interest in this world or its inhabitants. Destroying them would be a waste of time and resources, and quite frankly ...unnecessary. Wouldn't you agree, Elder Crichton?"

Jack Crichton was abruptly shoved into view. He had a bruise on his temple. His eyes and face were grim.

"I apologize for the blow. It seems a few traits have bred true in the Crichton line."

"Let him go – or you get _nothing_."

Scorpius shook his head in mock empathy.

"Not this time. You will be kept in those restraints, John. You will have no movement I do not permit. You are at my whim."

"I get to use the bathroom, though, right?" Sarcastic.

"Your father shall accompany us as the most immediate source of your compliance. My soldiers will remain here as added security. Any attempt to eject us from this planet will be met with a very swift and rather final response. You will be permitted to use comm channels to inform your leaders of this fact."

John opened his mouth to spit more defiance, but Akanke cut him off.

"_Stop_, John – you've – _we've_ lost – our responsibility now is to protect Earth in any way we can."

"A wise woman, John. You would do well to heed such sage advice."

"Leave them out of it."

Scorpius turned, began walking back to the Marauder. John was pushed to float along. The rest of Scorpius' prisoners fell in line.

"I think not. They protested, of course, that they knew nothing of your work. That was, quite frankly, a mistake." Scorpius and his troopers boarded and he directed his hostages into a cell. John was forced to hover wherever Scorpius went.

In the cockpit of the Marauder, Scorpius turned back, fixed John with a steely gaze.

"Do you require a demonstration of my sincerity, John? Would you like to pick the city I destroy first?"

John bit back a retort and finally realized that he had indeed been beaten. His choices and chances had gone from slim to none. He was screwed and he knew it , but by Christ he wasn't going to be the only one. He'd been right all along. At least he'd get the vindication and the guilt he'd had at leaving in the first place dissipated with alacrity.

"All right, Scorpy – you win. Is that what you wanted to hear? You _win_. I have no choices." With no little bravado, he added, "...but I have one condition to my full and _useful_ compliance."

Scorpius nodded, and smiled at John's addition of "useful". He was amused enough to ask,

"And that condition would be?"

John took a breath, allowed his rage to spill out.

"I want the bastard who put me here _dead._"

* * *

**THAT "BASTARD" **was currently cycling weapons as Aeryn put the Wing Fighter through its paces. The moment they'd broke free of Earth's atmosphere, a half-dozen Prowlers zeroed them and were furiously giving chase. Crichton had destroyed two of the nimble fighters, but the _Nimah_ was taking too many hits. Smoke was seeping through the ship, chemical fires the suppression systems could not adequately reach.

"This _is_ a fine ship," Aeryn told him. "...but it is _not _designed to got toe-to-toe with a Prowler!" She threw the A101 into a skidding slide that challenged the inertial compensators, flipped the ship over and lined the main gun up precisely with another Prowler – which Crichton promptly blew apart.

"Or six of them," Crichton added dryly. "Now down by half." He checked his tracker. "Oh-four-one-four Relka."

Aeryn nodded, dropped her speed, waited until the Prowler had acquired target lock, then power-climbed "over" the incoming Prowler. It overshot, its pilot clearly not expecting that manoeuvre. A brief spin put them back on course.

A Prowler suddenly climbed from Earth's atmosphere, darting out of the dark side of the planet's terminator, snapped a shot into the rear thruster assembly. A fire broke out aft, alarms hooted, but Shiv and the suppression system silenced them almost immediately. Even as it did, another peeled by – Crichton took a shot at it and missed. Neither it nor the one that followed it did – two shots punched into a conduit assembly and the _Nimah_ suddenly slewed around and Aeryn cursed. Alarms went off again, this time for different reasons.

"I've lost inertia controls – I have to drop speed!" As she said it, another shot hit near the forward viewscreen, and they were instantly venting atmosphere. Crichton managed to destroy one more before the next one he missed got a shot into his dorsal cannon – and directly into a thruster nozzle.

"Anything left?" He asked her, trying to get his cannon controls back on line.

"Nothing – I'm getting power failures all over the board!" Another shot rocked the ship. On his tracking board, two more ships circled out wide and vectored back in.

"Well... frell." he muttered, knowing there wasn't a whole lot he could do.

It was at that point his earlier musing as to the whereabouts of D'Argo and Chiana received an answer. Off their Hammonside, the familiar shape of Lho'laa materialized and promptly blew the last two Prowlers into bad memories.

"_Sorry we're late,_" D'Argo's welcome baritone said in way of greeting. _"We were somehow on the other side of the planet." _

_ The Monitor had screwed with pretty much everyone then..._

"Nice to see you anyway. Can you run interference while we see about getting this thing moving again?"

_ "Can do. I ordered Moya and Talyn behind Earth's moon – Chiana and I will head there when you're safe."_

"Thanks, D. You guys should prepare to get back through the wormhole as soon as – if I have my way, it won't be around for much longer."

"The other gonna help?" Chi asked.

"Nope. Not really his choice anymore, Chi." She chuckled.

_"I couldn't spot him in that chaos down there, John."_ D'Argo informed him. _ "Did he get away?"_

"Something like that." Crichton looked at the faces around him. "Let's get to work. There's more than five Prowlers on any Carrier."

Heads bobbed and they got to it. It was when repairs had been effected enough to get them moving again that Aeryn asked,

"What did you mean when you said 'something like that'?"

Crichton looked at her for a moment, knew what would follow, but in a moment of pure insolence, smiled at her as he said it.

"John. I gave him to Scorpius."

* * *

**IT HAD BEEN FORGOTTEN** in all the turmoil, but that caused it little concern. Indeed, that had been precisely in line with the plan. It sped swiftly through the conduit veins of the complex and neatly severed specific computer data trunks and access to hardened isolated failsafe CPUs and links to offsite data backups. It sent EMP pulses through encrypted hard drives and wiped incredibly sensitive – and incredibly advanced – information. When it at last found the heart of the complex – its brain, for all intents and purposes, it stole every last piece of information its own drives could hold – and then injected it with specially-designed junk data that would take decades to sort through.

That done, it indulged itself to a power feed and recharged itself.

It was not a human-built device. It did not belong on this planet. Its home base was nowhere near the earth.

But, its master had thought ahead.

After a quick scan, it had found the most direct exit from the complex and it took it. A quick topographic scan of the outside directed it to a suitable spot and it made its way there. Once there, it simply stopped, directed its internal antennas and signal system at the sky.

It would be heard or it wouldn't, but if a machine could have been said to have faith in its master, this machine had just such a thing.

* * *

**CRICHTON WAS PATIENTLY** enduring the anger from his current pilot, once she had discovered that John had not made it aboard. The Wing Fighter drifted in orbit while she indulged. It went from shocked rage to outright fury when he told her that John was now presently _en route_ to Scorpius' Command Carrier. Aeryn was so furious, she could only snap out,

"What _are_ you? How dare you think you - "

Crichton merely crossed his arms, turned a cold look her way.

"You can still walk home." She glared, clamped her mouth shut. He followed it with a terse:

"You let me know when you're done with all this emotional nonsense and actually start thinking again."

He turned and headed back to the cockpit. They'd managed to repair the damage to the Fighter while Aeryn fumed. Shiv stayed, watched Aeryn closely. Behind them, Thadon could be heard complaining as Stark tried to treat his wounds, aggravated by the wild ride out of Earth's orbit.

Still furious, Aeryn reluctantly swallowed her anger, tried to think.

_ How could he have possibly...?_ Had he really changed _so_ much? _Was_ he just some copied creature after all? Or...?

"The last I heard," he began, from the cockpit as she stowed tools, dry as a dustbowl - a slight condescending tone under his words, "John ran for a reason."

"Which you just rendered _moot_," Aeryn rejoined, her anger still bubbling. "I _told_ you why we left – the Ancients threatened to..."

"Don't care." He cut her off. "They tried to fix that oversight by dropping _me_ into orbit _without_ a ship. They at least gave you two a goddamn _choice_." His face hardened. "Your brave run for the hills is _meaningless, _and I'm tired of hearing about John's heroic martyrdom_._"

"It saved your lives!" She jabbed a sharp finger at him, stalking past Shiv into the cockpit behind him.

"Who told you that?" He stopped her with question. "Mr. Only-One-Working-Hetch-drive?" Hands on his gunbelts, setting his feet. The others had stopped to watch the battle. Aeryn could see from his stance that he expected violence. She slowed. He actually expected her to _attack_ him? She glanced at Shiv. The Blade Maiden was also expecting violence. Aeryn wondered if she should have been flattered that they considered her that dangerous.

"Did you hear that directly from _them_?" He finished.

Aeryn had to admit she hadn't.

"No... I didn't leave the module. I couldn't hear much of anything. I trusted him. I had no reason not to."

Crichton's smile had nothing of humour about it.

"Let's assume for the moment that I have an insight into how John's mind works." Mocking. "...and that _I _know what I'm doing."

Aeryn couldn't deny it, so she didn't.

"Why then?"

"He's where he needs to be." He told her. Behind Aeryn, Shiv cocked an eyebrow at him. He sent her a slight nod. Shiv seemed to ponder him for a moment, then sat in Aeryn's vacated seat and the ship was moving again moments later. Stark and Thadon merely watched from the rear, fascinated. Aeryn's bubbling anger had one more go.

"John is in Scorpius' hands! How is that _remotely_ where "he needs to be"?! Who told _you_ that? That frelling _clone_ in your head?" That last drew more closer looks.

Crichton leaned against a bulkhead, looking bored, which irritated her to no end.

"It's a shame you went native." A sigh, ignoring the revelation about Harvey. "Where _should_ he be? On the run on Earth, while Scorpius flattens city after city to get him? We've already seen how that looks, thanks to the Monitor." He shrugged. "Hell, that was probably why it did that."

Aeryn opened her mouth, closed it, looked frustrated.

"Should he be with us, so that we have a full Carrier up our asses? We get killed and John has absolutely _no hope at all_." Behind him, Thadon nodded, starting to be impressed, in spite of himself. "As long as he doesn't do anything stupid, he's as safe as he's gonna get."

"Crichton." Shiv. "We are approaching the _Vengeance._"

He nodded at Shiv, told her to dock. It was a few moments before Aeryn seemed to calm down. Her face composed itself and she closed her eyes. She sighed, once.

Crichton gave her the time.

"You have a plan." she said, not a question, after what seemed like a very long time. Those deep gray eyes opened and regarded him calmly. The Wing Fighter docked, power cycled through, and Crichton reached for the hatch controls.

"Like I said when we first met," he began as the door sliced open. "... you're either on my side or in my way."

Aeryn watched them leave the Fighter.

_ Yes,_ she finally decided. _That _is_ a choice I'm going to have to make, isn't it?_

* * *

**THE AURORA CHAIR** had had its share of victims. All, save the very rarest of individuals, had melted under its intrusive demands.

Jack Crichton had been stubborn, of course, and had yielded little of interest, although Scorpius had admired the man's courage in his wars and space travel in vessels that to Peacekeeper standards were little more than metal boxes. It certainly confirmed that Crichtons bred true. It also confirmed Scorpius' suspicions that Crichton would have told his father nothing. General Williams lasted precisely 121 microts before he dissolved into tears and screams of anguish. Apparently, the man had many, _many_ issues he had buried and left unresolved, and being directly and confronted with them in the Chair's immediacy was something with which he could not bear. Scorpius waved him out with complete contempt and had him taken back to Earth, dumped unceremoniously into the prisoners' holding pen at Cheyenne Mountain and promptly forgotten.

Its latest victim was proving a _much_ tougher nut to crack. Jocasta Akanke was showing herself to be a _most_ fascinating creature, Scorpius decided as he pondered the data so far collected from the human. She was mistress of many disciplines, possessed a remarkably precise and ordered mind, and had the cold calculation of a veteran Peacekeeper, which was a compliment, if a backhanded one. Scorpius almost regretted causing distress to such a one. She had all the appearances of being the most likely to be reasoned with – had he the time.

Unfortunately, the Scarrans made such methods untenable. Expediency must needs rule.

"Most remarkable," he told her, allowing some of his admiration to seep through. "You are a _most_ remarkable individual."

"I am immune to flattery, I assure you," Akanke told him dryly. She had yet to experience the full measure of the Chair. Truth to be told, Scorpius was actually reluctant to have her here. She seemed almost a kindred intellect.

"A pity," he told her. "This would go so much easier if you weren't."

"You're seeking some supplementary knowledge on Crichton's work; you won't retrieve anything of value from me," she informed him. "I was ordered by my superiors to leave him to his own devices."

"Curious. Yet your memories would indicate you have a deep knowledge on a great many subjects – _Director."_

"Frankly, I was trained by very skilled instructors on how to create false memories. They have been so well-interwoven with my real memories – and after years in the agencies in which I've been employed - even I no longer have the ability to tell accurate memories from false ones. I know nothing about stable wormholes or their employ – of that I can guarantee." Her face was guileless, and Scorpius' burgeoning admiration for this woman grew another notch. Were he anyone else, he knew she could very likely "reason" her way not only out of the Chair but possibly to passage back to Earth before anyone thought to stop her.

Unfortunately for Jocasta Akanke, she was dealing with Scorpius, and admiration aside, he had long since mastered the essence of _ruthless_. He gestured to "Peacekeeper Barbie" as Crichton had once called her, and she ramped up the machine.

"Unfortunate," Scorpius told her.

She gasped as the machine razored through her mind, but did not vocalize past that. Images flashed on the Aurora's screen.

"_He was storing it at Shonky," _a human with a bald head and dark glasses was telling her. "_It looks very thorough. He honestly thought we couldn't get through his lock."_

In her memory, she looked down at a large tome, flipped through it. In it were symbols Scorpius recognized. _Lusted_ after.

_"He wrote it all down," _she said with a mocking kind of wonder. _ "Everything he knows about wormholes."_

_ "Why do we need him if he just goes and gives it to us?" _That General.

_ "Do _you_ know what any of this means?" _she asks, thrusting the book at him.

_ "We're not stupid, Director. It can be figured out."_

Scorpius stops the chair, the image fixed on John's transcription. All that precious knowledge in one place, accessible and portable. And no irritating middleman.

"Wormhole equations." Scorpius found that he had to still the tremor in his hands. "Indeed, General... why _would_ we need him?"

He cocked his head at Akanke. "Where is this tome, now?"

Akanke shook her head. Inside she felt like screaming.

"Gone. " she breathed out, having trouble catching her breath. "Destroyed. Security reasons."

"You're lying, of course." He shook his head. "Come now. My Aurora Chair can sift any memory. Resistance forces us to use higher intensities. You have experienced only the lowest setting so far."

Akanke glanced at the woman at the control table. She was expressionless. Scorpius gave her a moment, then said casually,

"Your decision?"

Another pause, longer this time. He could see Akanke reassess him, and she frowned slightly. He again gave her the time. After a few dozen microts, he could see her reach a decision.

"I'm sworn to defend my country, good or bad, with all the means at my disposal. I am perfectly willing to extend that devotion to my planet." Scorpius saw her jaw clench, and was moving toward her even as he heard the crunch. He grabbed her head just as she coughed once and went limp. A quick investigation found the fractured tooth and the minuscule capsule therein. How it eluded the scans of her he did not know. A quick summons had a medtech on the scene and scanning her.

"Well, Director Akanke," he told her motionless form. "Very remarkable indeed." He ordered Akanke tended to, commed Braca to bring Crichton to the Chair.

"Foolish, John. _Very_ foolish." He paused, considered.

"Braca – bring me Lamm. I may have a way she can redeem her failures."

* * *

** ON EARTH,** things had quieted in Cheyenne Mountain. General Williams counted the Peacekeepers that marched past the holding area, and watched their patterns. He listened to them communicate (_thanks to the translator microbes all high-level officials and espionage agents now had thanks to Crichton and Sun_), and watched how they were organized. Because of the ocular overlay (_an offshoot of the study of Prowler tech_) on his right eye, and the wi-fi link he had to the base's mainframe (_micro-layered just under his skin_) – and it's still active comm system – gathering outside forces saw what he did. His performance on the invader's spaceship was all to a purpose, although he admitted to himself that his memory training had been a bit too close to home for his own liking, it _did_ get him off the ship and back on Earth. General Jeremiah Tecumseh "Tuck" Williams was nobody's fool and certainly no coward. He'd been in this game for almost 35 years, and _no one_ got the better of him unless he allowed it. He needed to be here, needed to see, to gather information, to coordinate the counterattack. If he had to play the hysterical coward to do it, he would – and did – and when the time came, he'd ram that performance right down the aliens' throats.

* * *

**THE MONITOR **had been built by beings that conquered wormholes, bent space and time to serve them as they saw fit. They'd manipulated races and civilizations and crushed and obliterated them when necessary. It had been created out of metals that had been forged in the crucible of an ancient sun, built to measure time on cosmic scales. It was no simple machine to be put down. Despite that, the Carrier _had_ damaged it, and self-repair routines struggled to fix what it could. As advanced as it was, two _billion _years had taken its toll. If it had been designed for such a thing, it might have fretted over how much of itself had been damaged, or that it had been caught by surprise in the first place, and then mutter about its advanced age.

Of course, it did none of these things. It assessed and reallocated resources, shut down systems that could not be repaired, or were simply no longer necessary or useful, scanned the local space, and reassessed its options. It then scanned the planet and registered the turmoil there.

In the middle of that turmoil, it received an odd signal.

The signal was on a tight-beam frequency that seemed to be aimed directly at it, but contained no information. It was simply, the Monitor deduced, to get its attention.

The Monitor launched a small collection probe, and rescanned the planet for signs of the Knowledge of the Profundity. One receptacle, the native called "John Crichton" who had resided below for the last 935 days was no longer on the planet, but on the vessel that had attacked it. For a brief moment, protocols ticked over. The Profundity could not be disseminated. It also knew that the native receptacle had created an extant version of the Profundity, which also could not be allowed to exist, but the Monitor could find no trace of it either on the planet or on the Carrier.

Regardless of the extant version's location, the Monitor activated its Dissolution Matrix – the weapon it would use to destroy the Carrier – and because it could not find the extant version, it would expurgate the planet's surface of all higher-order lifeforms to be sure it was never found at all. It logged several candidates currently on the planet for future sentience and civilization and calculated that with the removal of the humans would precipitate their ascension by several hundred millennia at least.

The Monitor was engaging its systems and preparing for power buildup when its collection probe returned. The Monitor's "mind" was a AI construct, with a synaptic reproduction of the chief scientist behind its construction to give it a foundation – and although it was intelligent, it did not possess either personality or genuine curiosity, it _had_ been designed to accumulate as much data as possible, and it discarded nothing as trivial.

So it was it regarded the collection probe's contents with a cursory examination, and was about to catalogue and store it, and return to its preparation of the Dissolution Matrix when those same contents began to _speak _about something it called "making a deal".

* * *

** THE WING FIGHTER** docked with precision and Crichton felt a surge of relief to step back onboard the _Vengeance_. It was the closest thing he had to a home and he found himself resenting having to be away from her. He was met at the hatch by a grimy and disgruntled Haxer. The interior was in the red wash of the emergency lighting.

"The _frell_? Hax? You been crawling through ducts?"

"Ducts, auxiliary maintenance tubes, conducer assemblies - " he sniffed - "the fluid therein to which I have a _specific_ allergy, I should add." He paused long enough to add, "Welcome back, Boss."

Crichton nodded. "We're still stealthed?"

"Oh, yeah, no worries on that." Crichton indicated the grime and grease.

"So what's with the duct-ratting?"

Haxer wiped off his hands with a rag, fluttered it at the wall.

"Remind me to _shoot _Miriya if I ever see her again. I cleared out her node bombs from the _Vengeance's_ AI – and to say she was unhappy about their variety and frequency would be an understatement – only to find that Miriya installed conduit trunk cutters and small slicer charges on _every_ damn connection between Vengeance's main core and all her backups."

"So...?"

"So until Cha and I find them _all_ – we don't dare use any of the ship's higher functioning systems."

"She installed those a while back, then. Probably before I even got the _Vengeance_." Haxer nodded.

"Yeah, most have been there for cycles." Crichton shook his head.

"Habits die hard. How many did you find and how much longer?" Haxer was looking past him. Crichton turned his head. "Oh, yeah – the new ones are Thadon No'Halladan – Shiv's new boyfriend; that's Stark, a Stykera." Hax suddenly smiled at that, gave Stark a closer look-over, but said nothing. Crichton indicated the raven-haired woman behind him, the vestiges of anger fading from her face. "Officer Aeryn Sun, Icarion Company, Pleisar Regiment." She blinked at that.

"The Pleisar, huh?" Hax nodded at them. "That was a first-rate crew. I heard they were disbanded after..."

"Not important," Crichton growled. "How many and how long?"

"Found nine so far. Three more places to check. I did a deep scan of any nooks and crannies and there's nothing else. Just those and we can get back to fighting trim."

"The sooner the better." He stepped past Haxer with a pat on his back. "Nice work. The rest of you can find a bunk or whatever you need. Auto-doc's aft for all you with boo-boos." He stopped. "Did you program it the way I said?"

"Done and done, Boss. We're feeding it through Ops. That's where Cha is now. The integration is tricky without full AI. Won't take long though."

"Good. That's where I'll be. Shiv, see to our guests." Without waiting, he stalked off.

Aeryn watched him go, at that moment reaching a decision.

They needed to talk.

* * *

_**CRICHTON HEARD THE CRY **of "INCOMING!" echo across the field, bounce off the wall he was currently crouched behind. It was followed by the advancing crump-whump of heavy artillery._

_He flattened himself, rolled into a crater just as a shell hit, the noise deafening, dirt and detritus – some of it organic – spattered his cover._

_That cry was repeated up and down the line, as thunder rolled overhead and then came crashing to the ground, to blast earth, rocks and bodies high into the air. _

_He risked a quick look, felt himself grinning fiercely as he saw his companion dive for the nearest sunken bunker, roll over an unrecognizable corpse stiff and flash-burned, outracing the white-hot fragments of rock that rained down behind her. They hissed where they contacted the damp earth. He saw her glance through the observation slit just in time to hear a trooper yell, "To the right - !" only to be cut off in the buzz of a Slicer silencing him forever. The damn thing embedded itself not a motra from her bunker, sprayed the blood of the trooper over the wall in a wide swathe, then ground angrily for a moment, went silent. A half-dozen men converged on it and shot it until it stopped moving completely. While they did it another came from behind them and chop them to pieces._

Goddamn Slicers!_ Autonomous machines housing a deranged organic brain, encased in a series of interlocking suspensors and saw blades, released onto the battlefield to indiscriminately kill anything that moved. To whom they belonged, he did not know._

_Fortunately, there weren't many of them._

_He was about to shout to her, to give her his location, when there was another crack-boom, and another body crashed into his bunker, skidded to a halt about a metre away from him. This one was covered in elaborate blood-red tattoos, tattered rags and mismatched armor. The face was craggy, scarred and fierce, the eyes wild and the teeth sharp. He was armed with ballistic pistols and edge weapons._

Shit! Wāko Navar!

_ The pirate shouted "Illyiiiieeeeyah!", and thrust a wicked serrated blade about a metre long at his head as Crichton fumbled for his pistol, realized he'd lost it, knew the rifle slung around his shoulder couldn't be unlimbered in this confined space – another silent curse and he was ducking under that blade, scooping and throwing dirt at the Navar's eyes, reaching for the handle of that vicious pike and aiming a vicious punch at the pirate's throat. _

_ Crichton realized that the Navar was several times stronger than he was, but he wasn't about to go down without a fight. Artillery fell again, and shrapnel pinged through the bunker, a chunk hitting him in the head above the eye, sending him to the floor as he ducked the larger chunks. It stung, but didn't slow him – he tossed another punch but they only seemed to make the Navar blink and angrier – Crichton jammed a knee into the approximate area of the Navar's groin, which caused him to drop the pike – simply so he could pull an equally-vicious looking dagger. A hard thrust had it slicing through his leather longcoat and clanging on the torso armor he was wearing under his vest. Crichton rolled with it, kicked the Navar hard in the chest, managed to get to back to his feet just as the knife came back at him, grappled again with the pirate, but the Navar was the stronger, slammed him against the wall of the bunker - and the knife was inexorably inching closer to his throat. _

_ The tip had pierced the skin, and he was pushing back with every ounce of strength he had, the blade one small centimeter from ending his life when the Navar suddenly glared at him, gasped a bubble of gray-green blood and collapsed in a heap. Crichton looked up to see a long lance had pierced the pirate, pinned him to the ground. He followed it up to strong arms and an attractive female face he knew. That same face smiled at him. It was one he was very glad to see._

_His companion had at last found him._

_ **"We must not linger.** Your captain had stated that more Navar were headed this way. More than you and I may comfortably handle on our own." Crichton nodded at that, brushed himself half-heartedly off. The artillery barrage had moved on. They could hear it thumping further down the hillside._

_ "His name's Dar'shanne, and he's not my captain." He searched around the immediate area, found his pistol, retrieved it. Lost when he'd pell-melled into the bunker. Checked over, it was still serviceable. "Good advice, though." He looked her over. "I definitely don't want to face anyone _you're _not comfortable with." She laughed a rich feminine laugh, nodded, and led the way. _

_ They made it to Reihna Karadandidos' camp with only a minimal resistance, easily dispatched. Her outpost was under a serious amount of fire, however. Reihna's band held the quickest approach to the hoard, Dar'shanne was "holding the sky approach" as he called it, his fighters blocking – or at least attempting to block – any attempts for more pirates to assault the spot directly. That didn't stop the eight other large pirate bands in the Uncharteds already here or coming quickly from simply landing further out and attacking ground-side._

"_Reihna!" Crichton called on his comm as they approached, "I'm here!"_

"_Vot's Skull, Crichton!" Reihna seemed almost pleased to see him. "What's that whoreson say?"_

"_Dar'shanne's not moving in any more help until you start 'harvesting', he says," Crichton told her, once he made it inside her 'fortress', essentially one of her big ships grounded. He washed his face, then dropped his weary butt into the nearest chair. Outside, he could hear the crack of fire against the hull. R'vhsme stood beside him, like a guard. He found himself very aware of her – in a very good way. He hoped that meant that he was shaking off this seemingly-perpetual depression he was under. There wasn't a thing about R'vhsme that didn't interest him. "Bastard!" Reihna snarled, punching a gloved fist at the air. "How quickly does he think I can haul a hundred and eighty slonnits of loot with my eighty men?" Crichton smiled – almost _two hundred metric tons_ of it. Whoever had stashed it here all those centuries ago had been extremely adept at either the accumulation or thievery of wealth. _

"_Get me another runner!" Reihna waved her pistol at a pirate closest to her, who nodded and dashed off. Reihna glared over at Crichton and his N'sharrasti companion, frowned. _

"_Wāko land-side, you said? How many did you see?"_

"_Aside from their initial landing site, only about a hundred or so on foot – but they're spreading out. Dar says he spotted at least a half-dozen of their ships in orbit. He also says to tell you that the Umurrahd Vasheen and the Oostck Hammers are also on their way. Almost got whacked by one of their dropships and a frigging Navar on my way here."_

"_You fought well enough," R'vhsme said, nodding at him. She collapsed her lance into something more manageable, stowed it on her belt. She didn't look it aside from the obvious, but he knew she had a least a dozen other weapons stashed on her person. Some of them were disguised as 'jewelry'. Of all the pirates in the room, R'vhsme looked the most like a classic pirate queen. She made Reihna look like a rather unattractive man next to her smooth good looks. Not that Reihna would have given a cold dren._

"_Praise indeed," Reihna added, looking over at her status array screens, then back to Crichton. "How the likes of _you_ ever merited the likes of _her_, I'll never frelling know." _

_Crichton didn't know either. They'd been here for a weeken, and R'vhsme had singled him out two days in and was practically now his constant companion. He wasn't complaining. She'd saved his life at least a dozen times already. She was also apparently showing an interest that went beyond simple companionship and into happy male/female interactive areas._

_Granted, he could be reading her "signs" completely wrong._

_R'vhsme planted herself solidly, said, "How _you_ managed one such as the Silent Hand, I cannot imagine." Reihna looked suddenly cross, opened her mouth, recalculated, gauged the speaker, then smiled slightly._

"_Aye. Point taken." Reihna sighed, contemplated him, smiled slightly to herself. She hit her comms. _

"_Vart! Move your frelling eema or I'll send Shiv after you!" _

_Her smile expanded, mercurially changing moods as she had been famed. "Gotta stay on these idiots constantly. I need to get this done to send to Dar'shanne and tell him to flank those Navar bastards. We'll never get offworld with this haul if he doesn't do something useful." She frowned at Crichton. "You staying put?" A nod. "Good. I'll be back."_

_She stomped out of the room and they could hear her bellowing in the corridor outside, calling Dar'shanne every pejorative she could think of, and with Reihna's command of language, she could call on a lot. _

_Crichton chuckled to himself, shook his head. She was as quick to _bed_ Dar'shanne as she was to threaten his life, both of which she did often. She'd also tried more than just threatening it – if some of the scars on the man were any indication. Crichton wondered if that wasn't the basis of their relationship – such as it was. Relationships were a freller, that's certain. He'd pretty much tried to avoid them this last little while._

"_Why do you run with pirates, Crichton?" R'vhsme asked as he reached for a drink. He'd been wondering that, himself. "This pirate war – over pointless lucre?" She shook her head. "Paradon does not need their ilk. You are not of their breed."_

_He wasn't, he had to admit, really sure just what breed of anything he actually was – if he was even a person or some duplicated animated ...thing._

_He was also starting to not give a good damn, either._

_ As she stepped away from him, Reihna returned. "Karadandidos – I am leaving. The N'sharrasti are withdrawing from this world. We have what we came for - we do not fight for something as base as loot. We are not thieves."_

_ Reihna just nodded._

_ "When base is all you have, dear, loot is a step up." She cursed when a particularly large boom rocked the ship, ran to check her systems. R'vhsme turned to Crichton. _

_ "Will you come with me?" She asked him, surprising him - pleasantly - just as another loud explosion rocked the ship, and fifty Wāko Navar flooded through the breach..._

* * *

**CRICHTON AWOKE SLOWLY, RELUCTANTLY.**

_R'vhsme._ _Another_ dream about her? Why was he dreaming about her so much? He lay there and considered it a while. Well, she _was_ one of the very few he'd not 'emotionally excised', so it was probably no surprise his mind was taking him back subconsciously to somewhere he'd been actually happy – or at least something that seemed to at least drive through the neighbourhood of happy.

Again, he wondered what she'd think of him now.

_Dammit._

_You could go back, despite what you said. _Harvey. _You know she'd take you back and you could kiss all this dren and associated goodbye once and for all. You don't owe any of them anything._

He rubbed his face, got up from his bed, made his way to the head.

_I can't do that to her, Harve. She'll be responsible for three million lives soon – if she's not already. I'm a noose around the neck of any woman foolhardy enough to care about me. I kinda like 'em a little too much to keep damning them._

_ She is _hardly_ 'any' woman, Crichton. N'sharrasti are one of the very few enemies Scarrans _boast_ about killing – if they can manage it. She could handle herself and you quite readily – and did, if memory serves._

_You know something, Harve? That idea has definite merit. I may actually like you someday if you keep being this smart. _

Harvey snorted a short laugh at that.

_First things first, though, like always. I actually do appreciate your council, y'know._

_Thank you, John. I shall endeavour to continue to be wise._

He hit the button for the waste disposal and closed his fly. It had been a hell of a day, and it wasn't remotely over. He was glad that some things didn't change, even having been halfway across the universe. A Peacekeeper toilet was remarkably like a human one, with only a few minor functional differences. The waste he and his crew flushed would get completely recycled, urine for drinkables, solid waste for fuel for his auxiliary fusion reactors. Say what you wanted about the Peacekeepers, but from what he'd seen, they were masters of using their resources to their fullest extent. Granted, his waste elimination cycle had changed from what he'd remembered as roughly the norm for humans. He didn't defecate as often, due to the two-dench vestin symbiote in his intestinal tract keeping him regulated – standard PK practice in combat - to only three times a weeken, and then there wasn't a lot to eliminate as the symbiote had to eat _something_. He only urinated twice a day, drunk or parched, for the same reason. An army that had to run to the can every five minutes didn't get much done.

Whatever worked. Survival meant you did what you had to, regardless of how odd it sounded.

R'vhsme understood those realities. She had made him see, set him on this path, a patient and empathetic teacher. He'd never been "inferior" or infuriating to her. His mistakes simply a learning experience, not a 'deficiency'. A decision flitted through the cellars of his mind and he frowned. Wherever she was, he knew she was infinitely better off without him anywhere near her. He could no longer afford to care about anyone. Crichton allowed himself one last fond memory, tossed her a silent heartfelt "thank you" and his affection and locked her away in a steel safe, welded it shut and put it deep, deep into the echoing caverns in his heart.

"Face the realities," he muttered to himself, liking them not at all.

He turned a corner, and collided with Aeryn coming from the other direction. After an awkward moment, he skipped straight to,

"You want something?"

Aeryn seemed to gather herself. It was odd to see the emotions writ so plan across her face. Earth had mellowed her, he thought with some distant regret. She'd been blunted, lost her edge, been... _domesticated. _It was real shame for so fine a soldier to be so wasted. He shrugged internally. Not his fault. Not his concern. She'd chosen, the consequences were hers to wrangle. He had no one, and no one to care about. It was a freedom he cherished. That it lead only to his death didn't stir him in the slightest. That too was a kind of freedom.

"I need to know something, if I'm to help you."

Crichton raised an eyebrow at her.

"I don't recall asking for your help." He made to step around her. She stopped him, actually getting up the courage to touch him. He wondered if he felt physically artificial, had never bothered to ask. Well, Miriya and a few others hadn't thought so, but then, they weren't Aeryn Sun, now, were they? They'd had nothing with which to compare, he thought, surprised at the pique that thought brought with it. He wondered if he was either just tired or his inhibitor was starting to give out. He absently reached for it, remembered who was looking at him, scratched his head instead. Aeryn brushed the remark aside.

"This is serious."

"I'm aware."

"Can I trust you?" She blinked those large grays at him.

"I'm not the one to ask."

"What is that supposed to mean?"

"Well, if I say 'yes', you'll just be suspicious of my motives, and if I say 'no', you'll just shake your head and get frustrated." He pulled his arm from her grasp. He didn't, he decided, like being this close to her. She smelled too good, looked too good.

"So what's the point of saying anything?" He sniffed. "You've already made your decision anyway." It sounded accusatory.

"Have I?" She challenged. "About what?"

"Everything you think matters."

She actually did get frustrated then – he could see it – but not over what he'd thought.

"I _need _to trust you." She told him, her voice earnest, which could not have surprised him more if she'd just peeled her uniform open and flashed him on the spot.

_What the frell brought this on?_ He looked her over, but sincerity radiated from her. She really _had_ turned some corner.

He frowned.

No... just desperation to save John. She was looking for angles, and right now, he was all she had. She knew the effect she had on Crichtons. Well, not him. Not anymore.

Fine. He'd play this silly game.

"All I'll tell you is that, if things go my way, it'll turn out. You can go back to domestication and John can have his nice safe planet to hide on forever." His eye hardened. "Suit you?"

She grimaced. This wasn't going as she'd hoped.

"You don't care if I trust you or not?" He sighed.

"I can't make you do anything, Officer." Something flitted through her eyes at that. "You'll either trust me or you won't. It won't change how I do anything."

He stepped around her, returned to Command, she followed, sat in the co-pilot seat. Crichton looked at her, looked at Haxer.

"She volunteered." Haxer told him with a shrug as Crichton sat down. Crichton glanced the woman going over the controls to his right. He didn't feel any better for his nap. Slept, but never rested. That was just too true. He didn't feel any better for his and Aeryn's talk, either. She was beginning to perplex him, and he didn't like that at all.

Aeryn just looked at him blandly, waiting for his response.

_What the frell. You used the resources you had._

"Can always use a good pilot." She nodded. "Been awhile?"

"A while." She tried a small smile. "Not long enough."

"Go with the best, I always say," He didn't see the quick flash of pleasure in her eyes from the compliment. She had to admit that this felt far more comfortable and natural than sitting at a desk, transcribing Prowler specs for weekens on end. She also finally admitted to herself that he'd been correct. John's capture had been inevitable. One way or another.

Coming back to Earth, she now realized, had been the biggest mistake they could have made. She'd almost bristled at the "domestication" crack and then realized the truth of it. Trusting him, she realized, depended on her honestly answering a question she'd so far avoided.

_ Was he John Crichton or not?_

Crichton pointed at a tracking screen, distracted her. "What's that?"

"It's the Monitor. We've been tracking it." Hax shrugged. "It's in no hurry."

Crichton nodded.

"Anything we should do?" Crichton shook his head.

The comm array suddenly pinged three times, softly. Aeryn reached for it.

"Leave it."

"That's an alert signal..."

"I know what it is. Leave it." She shrugged. His ship.

"Shiv manage Stark?"

"They've been having interesting conversations in the last arn." Hax shook his head with a wry smile. "Thadon keeps wondering when she became so philosophical." He gestured down the corridor, and the Stykera was sitting cross-legged in a small tool alcove just off the corridor, comfortable on the gray deck, staring at Shiv as calm as any Buddha. He nodded at her and she eyed him for a moment, seeming rather dubious, then joined them in Command. Stark seemed to shrug and then rose, disappeared deeper into the ship.

"You and Stark getting along?" Crichton asked her as she entered.

"Stykera." Shiv muttered, arcing an eyebrow at the mention of Stark. "They are… not common." She finished diplomatically. Her people knew of them. There was no trust from the Fabricators for the Stykera mystics. When the Great Plan came to fruition, all mystics would be excised from the universe. Shiv had been programmed with that revulsion, but her mistrust came from more practical considerations.

"You are captain and it is your decision, but I am curious as to his inclusion. What use can he be?" She asked, narrowing her eyes at his back.

"That depends." Crichton muttered. "His use will tell, depending on circumstances." Crichton then grinned sardonically. "At the very least he can see that Johnny has a smooth transition to the other side if Scorpy spaces him." Aeryn frowned at him.

Haxer laughed derisively.

"So _that's_ Stark's cover?" He ran his hands through his hair, chuckled. "That's _almost_ original."

"What are you talking about?" Chak'sa asked him, turning in her chair to look at him. Her system checks were almost finished.

"You know Baniks, right?" Haxer began. "They're a gene-boosted and engineered slave race, Cha. They work in some of the harshest environments imaginable – and they're unbelievably tough." He cracked his knuckles, flexed his hands. Chak'sa nodded. Baniks were used to clean and handle the dead at the Lost Fortunes Arena.

"That is common knowledge." Shiv added.

"Yeah, but what _isn't_ is _why_ they're so tough. That Baniks were _created_ originally by the Hadrasheem thirty thousand cycles ago as a warrior-slave race. Because their religion banned one Hadrasheem from killing another on pain of eternal agony – which they all fervently believed, by the way - the Baniks were a rather adroit way around this. Be killed by something else and straight to paradise." Haxer shook his head, amused.

"The Baniks were used by one faction of the 'Sheem to slaughter another and on and on until the Hadrasheem were on the verge of extinction. The Scarrans finished them off when they annexed what remained of their empire." He snickered, his face conveying what he thought of their religion. "Guess they're all in paradise now."

He went back to his story. "The Scarrans used 'em, let them breed and then exported them. Because they can reproduce so fast it was kinda ideal. That was the point though, lots and lots of easily replaceable soldiers. And they're slaves, so who gives a frell? Scarrans bred the warrior part out though. They just wanted the quick-slave-turnover bit."

"And you know this how?" Crichton asked him, crossing his arms, looked skeptical.

"C'mon, Boss – I've been hacking forever." Haxer replied, as if it should have been utterly obvious. "Scrambled as it is, my memory is still pretty sharp." Crichton felt foolish, nodded that he was to continue.

"Stykera _aren't_ Baniks, though. Being a Banik is just a cover. They're _completely_ engineered – and they sure as Hezmana _aren't_ mystics."

He laughed again at the ridiculousness of the idea.

"So what are they?" Aeryn asked., not believing it.

"Storage. Everything else's an excuse."

Crichton and the others looked at him dubiously.

"_Storage!?_"

* * *

**"HONESTLY. DATA STORAGE**. He's what's known in the data retrieval business as a 'Symth' or a SIM: _Sentient Information Module_." They looked dubious yet, and Haxer wasn't surprised, but the usage of such methods wasn't _so_ unusual – it was just that most societies who employed such certainly didn't want anyone knowing they did. Covert technology – especially as advanced as Stark - served little purpose if everyone knew about it.

He reached over and picked up a datachip, rolled it in his fingers. "C'mon. It's advanced, but it's not magic. There are voyants, aren't there? Hypersensitive nervous systems so acute they pass for telepathic – which is more fictional claptrap. _Why_ do you think voyants are so tightly controlled?"

"What's this 'mystic' crap, then?" Crichton asked. Haxer shrugged.

"Easy. Scarrans are frelling superstitious." He said that like it should have been obvious, as well. Chak'sa just rolled her eyes, let it pass. "Think about it. Engineer a 'mystic' that could express-ship you to your brand of paradise and then have them conveniently pop up in a slave population? What a find! They're property! Free easy trip to the afterlife!" Haxer shrugged again. "Whatever – it is _not_ because he's a conduit to some drennish 'other side'."

"And the rest? I have memories of him being smoked by Plokavians and coming back." Crichton got himself comfortable. Aeryn nodded. She remembered that too. "I'm talking _smoked._" The others were listening intently. Haxer slid a half-grin across his face.

"Look – whatever you've heard or been told is _wrong_. That's the point. Stykera don't 'pass people over' – they _record and store personalities – and all the memories that go with it_. Why do you think Stark is so manic? He must have and/or had dozens – if not _hundreds_ of personalities in his head. Normally, he'd have a set number and then get flushed, and go back to it." He checked the data stream on the computer before him. "Stark was Scorpius' next pet when he was done frelling my brain. He was trying to 'read' that data with the Aurora Chair – all those dead Scarran _High Councilors and Ministers and Generals_, y'see. He'd been at it for cycles. Stark probably knows more about Scarran culture, intent and strategy than most Scarrans."

He chuckled, glanced at Chak'sa, who simply blinked at him indulgently. He ended his chuckle with a smile reserved for her and continued -

"Technically, Stykera aren't bodies – they're cohesive energy – usually a stabilized plasma matrix with a nano-circuitry mesh giving them their shape - with a personality sim imprinted. Kinda like how they make DC Agents like Miriya, except that agents like her are a frell-load more common, although most are just standard folks with mnemonic implants or eidetic enhancements. His body is just the shell, so to speak."

He held up the chip.

"Like this. Only Stykera are one of these with the ability to go get the data themselves. They get decoupled to retrieve the data and re-coupled and sent out for more. Hence being a cohesive energy matrix. Much easier that way. Don't have to feed them, just leave them in a larger computer or data module until you need 'em. Those Plokavians you mentioned didn't do anything to him except decouple him. I'd bet his nano-mesh just free-floated until he'd reconstituted enough energy to reform his shape. That stuff is damn-near indestructible."

Crichton thought about it, scratched his chin with his thumb, got up and began to pace.

"He _was_ far calmer when he came back after that." Behind him, Aeryn nodded.

Haxer nodded in turn.

"He likely flushed a lot of those personalities when he was decoupled. He'd have been a bit fezzik'd because he'd stored them too long – probably. He doubtless had a lot of overlap."

"He didn't have anyone to retrieve the information he had - because he'd been free-ranging." Crichton tapped an index finger on the console, thought. Not what he'd planned originally. It could actually work _much_ better now.

"Rogue data," Haxer agreed with a nod. "Under control, they're probably the best covert information retrieval and encryption system out there. You can't mindfrell 'em because you ruin the data, you can't interrogate them because they're all half-mad trying to juggle personalities, and even if you blast them to Hezmana, they just reintegrate and keep going."

"How many are there? Who makes something that sophisticated?" Chak'sa asked.

Hax shrugged.

"Who knows? Even the data I could uncover only mentioned they existed, outlined only the basic parameters. There's at least a dozen official explanations, all contradictory – by design. They're _ultra_-secret – that's the _point_. I'm figuring it's stolen or appropriated tech. The Scarrans seek them out, but all the Stykera I've ever heard about come from _Influence_ space."

Shiv inquired, "The light?"

"Prosaically? Convenient data port, probably his access – how he 'reads' personalities."

Crichton felt Harve perk up in his head as this new information rolled over in his head.

_First things first, Harve. _

"What's with the mask?"

Haxer nodded. "Most likely also a storage medium. Part of his shell. You said he'd used it to pass messages?"

Crichton nodded. That's how John and his friends had found Stark after the Plokavians had dispersed him. "It's likely the backup media for his own identity – when he's incorporated, he likely stores an extra personality or two in there – not necessarily his own. It's probably blank, otherwise. If you deep-scanned it, you'd probably find it laced with some seriously fine circuitry – the nano-mesh hub - his storage for his own personality when he's decoupled."

"He doesn't know?" Aeryn asked.

"Unlikely. Not necessary. Stark is deep cover in a way Miriya would never be able to accomplish." He shrugged, scratched his nose, mused. "If you _think_ you're a person, does that make you one? Wondered that myself, more than once."

Crichton stopped pacing, eyed Hax for a long moment, then nodded. "Might be all some folks have." Aeryn looked at him oddly, frowned. He seemed to think about it for a moment. "So, it's only one way? The personality transference thing?"

Hax shrugged. "Well, if he can extract them, he can probably implant them."

"Curious." Blandly noncommittal.

"Take Miriya for instance - she's likely only an implanted amalgam of real personalities. She was probably based on several people, not any one person." He shrugged. "She's sentient data – in a way, like Stark himself."

The _Vengeance _hummed around them.

"You could always just ask him."

"I think," Crichton said thoughtfully, "some illusions are best left not shattered."

"I don't mean to harp on this," Aeryn waited until Crichton had sat down in his seat again. "But _do_ you have a plan for rescuing John?"

Behind them, Haxer abruptly started to chuckle. Aeryn glanced back at him, irritated. Crichton sent her a short chuckle of his own.

"I plan on letting him rescue himself. If that qualifies, then... _yes_."

Aeryn ground her teeth, but said nothing.

"Boss..." Haxer looked up abruptly from his board. "I'm not sure entirely how... but you've got a comm."

Any comm that perplexed Haxer was worth investigating.

"From whom?"

Haxer sent him a disbelieving look.

"From _Miriya_."


	3. Chapter 3

_After some delays (a death in the family) the next chapter comes along._

* * *

**AFTER A TIME,** with his father still somewhere in a cell on the Carrier, John was let out of his rather elaborate restraints. Scorpius summoned him to his quarters. They ware large, tasteful he supposed, but not overdone.

"I know you think I seek nothing but power, John, but you are wrong." Scorpius told him, in his most reasonable voice, without preamble, dismissing the guards. John felt the urge to spit, refrained.

"Sure, Scorp, you just want wormholes for research and sightseeing the universe – give me a goddamned_ break_. You're fooling _no one_."

"Perhaps I should amend that by stating I do not seek them for _personal _power. As you can see, I _already _have as much power as any Peacekeeper can aspire to – save being on High Command itself." John mulled, accepted that as a fact, for the moment.

"Of course you don't want to rule the Galaxy. You just selflessly _serve._" Heavy disdain, which Scorpius both expected and ignored. "What _do_ you want them for, O Galactic Saint?

"John – you judge me by standards that do not apply. For all your intelligence, you have a very narrow viewpoint. My goal, and about this I have never lied – to you or anyone else has always been to stop the Scarrans. To deter them. To crush them, if possible – to remove, in any way I can, the very real and grave threat they pose to the Galaxy and everyone in it. You assume – understandably – that because of the way you have been treated at my hands – at Peacekeeper hands – that somehow all of this is 'malevolence', a cold move by a tyrannical enemy." He shook his head. "But an assumption is all it is. You could not be more in error."

John jabbed a finger against his head.

"Everything you've _done_ – everything I've been put through and you have the _guts_ to stand there and tell me it was_ nothing personal _– as if that makes it_ better_!?"

"I do not have time for restraint, John. For the niceties of civilized behaviour. I sense in you a kindred intellect – and you will not believe this, but we are not so different in the essentials, we both cherish knowledge for its own sake, and will do anything to protect our homes." Scorpius was not a wanderer when he talked. He sat calmly and spoke evenly, but John could hear the passion in his voice, the intensity of emotion. It was unnerving in a way anger would not have been. "Events have forced my hand, John – as they always have. I am moved by nothing but revenge and necessity."

"Ha – there! Revenge! You said it yourself."

"I am being truthful with you, John. Of course I want revenge for the mad experiment that created me, for the pain I have endured. The Scarrans created me on some whim and tortured me when they did not like the results, as if it were somehow _my_ fault. The Peacekeepers use me, and they will never accept me – but they have given me a home, at least, no matter how much they despise me. Simple bigotry I can tolerate, however, because they need me more than I need them. Whether you believe me or not, I do not lie, John."

"You selectively edit the truth? That's still lying."

"Hardly. I merely keep certain facts to myself. Anyone sufficiently intelligent could fill them in for themselves. That they cannot says more about them than myself." Scorpius rose smoothly. "These, this, all of what I say is merely abstraction, John. Words. I do not and would not expect you to simply be persuaded by anything I say, and understandably. As you say, you have been treated poorly by myself and my colleagues. I admit and accept this. I will not offer an apology because you would neither believe nor allow it." He walked to a large monitor, stopped. "So, I will simply present my case more graphically, with no commentary. You may judge for yourself."

John crossed his arms, looked skeptical.

"Propaganda now? Really?"

Scorpius merely smiled a slight smile.

"This is all raw, unedited combat footage, John. From our soldiers' helmet cameras and remote drones. Battle satellite feeds and what could be salvaged from combat vehicles. You will see three separate battles, on three worlds – Alersi III, Co-ouan Operth and Zenatati Nou." He activated the screen, the image of the interior of what looked like a troop transport. "I should also mention that on all three occasions, we _lost_." He gestured to a chair. "You may also want to sit. This will take a while."

John shook his head, and remained where he was, arms still crossed. By the end of the footage, he had sat, hands gripping the armrests, face pale and he obviously shaken. If what Scorpius had shown him had been edited, had been faked, it was the finest John had ever seen. Scorpius interjected only to explain certain terms or describe incidences for which John would have no larger context.

The footage had been of scene after scene of sheer vicious, barbarous brutality. Cruelty on a scale John could not have imagined, although now he would never have to again, his mind feeling more scarred and brutalized than from any mind probe. The Scarrans outmatched their enemy. They knew that. Their weapons were overpowered, designed to crush and burn and maim. No death he witnessed had been quick. Scarran soldiers delighted in their sheer physical power, often electing to tear opponents limb-from-limb, biting, slashing, cutting, burning. They would drape the vivisected remains of Peacekeeper soldiers over their shoulders, fling them at their comrades. Any prisoners they _did _take – male prisoners, at any rate – met grisly fates.

At something called a "scrag", male PK prisoners would be stripped naked, forced into a cage that looked to made of razor wire, and the Scarrans would wrap the cage in chains and use ground vehicles to slowly constrict the cage about them, until nothing remained but bloody, ribboned pulp. Scarrans often used it as a form of entertainment during chow times, betting heavily on the last one to survive. John had been violently ill on several occasions, vomiting loudly into the receptacle by the chair. That it had been there had shown that Scorpius had anticipated this happening.

Sebacean women – Peacekeeper or otherwise... to be female in any war was horror in the offing, but the Scarrans seemed to take the idea of rape as 'damaging an enemy's goods and morale' to an entirely new level. The women they let live, many of them.

It was no mercy. Whether killed by Scarrans or by their own hands, which was inevitable in most cases – some had come back to PK encampments, strapped themselves with heavy explosives and made suicide runs on the Scarrans, and he found he could not blame any of them – the end result was the same. Many died from the act itself, and the Scarrans often vidded the rapes and broadcast them across the planet. When they left, dead and survivors alike were left to rot where they'd fallen, or were hung in elaborate displays as warnings.

John knew he would never sleep again, not in peace, not ever again, and both cursed and thanked Scorpius for seeing this horror. A thousand emotions roiled through him, all making him ill, making him beyond furious, beyond remorseful.

He understood now. Scorpius could see it.

"Why... why would you have this footage? _Why_?" Scorpius could hear the horror in John's voice.

"For training purposes." It was said so casually, John almost laughed in disbelief. "This is not private. It can be accessed from anywhere on the ship. Every Peacekeeper Carrier, every base, every ship and dormitory, every crèche, every training facility has this footage. So it will never be forgotten." He turned it off. "I watch it myself, whenever I waver. Whenever I find myself wishing for another solution." He sighed. "They don't even hate us, John. What you saw was simply their nature. Uplifted far too early in their evolution."

"I can understand why they need to be to stopped, Scorpius. But I can't give you wormhole weapons. They're beyond dangerous. Some can kill... _everything_. I can't do it."

"Again you misunderstand me, John. I want a _solution_. I want a deterrent, if I cannot have a killing blow, although I want that most definitely. You can understand that." A reluctant nod. "I will ask what I should have asked upon our first meeting, what I handled so poorly. _I need your help_, John. I ask for it. I _beg_ for it! If the Scarrans destroy us, they will have little to deter them. They will never stop. Even Earth below... they will find it eventually. They already know about you, John. They know you know of wormholes. They are amassing their armies and fleets now. It will only be a matter of time. Your world will drown in blood, all will. If you do not believe what you have seen, you might believe Aeryn Sun. She was at Co-ouan Operth." That stopped him. She'd escaped _that_?

"I don't know, I..."

"Would you sacrifice _trillions_?" Scorpius' intensity ramped. John could see wisps around his coolant insert. There was no faking that kind of intensity and it took him aback. "Your planet is meaningless in this fight! You cannot stay hidden! I found you, _they_ will find you!" He trapped John in the chair. "I cannot save us. You can save not only your own world, but thousands of them – uncountable sentient lives! I will give you _anything _you ask in exchange – even my own_ life_! _Just help me save them_!"

Scorpius staggered back, calling for Braca and his coolant attendant. They were there in moments.

John stared at the screen upon which seemed etched such unspeakable horror. It was overwhelming. Could it be possible that he'd been wrong? _Could_ it have been an act of desperation on Scorpius' part? Ifs and coulds and possiblys rolled through his head. If it were true, how could he simply turn his back? He was not responsible for anything but his own planet... but Scorpius – actually _noble_, if brutal, driven? Possible?

Cursed? He knew what that felt like. Misunderstood? _Whose standards_ were _you using, John, in light of all you've seen_?

He had not handled any of this well so far, and he knew _that_ with a painful certainty. Stubborn pride was a definite Crichton hallmark, and while it had its uses, it also had serious drawbacks.

He couldn't stand by. Not _if_ it were true, and he knew that it could easily all be lies, but it was awfully elaborate if it was, all a little _too_ real. He couldn't ignore it, if he had the power to prevent it.

Too wrapped up to save one planet, to be its hero, to make it safe?

Nowhere was safe, he knew. It had never been. Nowhere while such horror was possible.

What was it, he wondered, as he watched the Scarran half-breed being tended, that had provoked him straight into jealousy and resentment the moment his doppelganger had made his presence known? He hadn't tried to claim anything, make any statements – _and in his secret heart of hearts he knew the guy was right –_ that weren't actually in Earth's best interests.

Stubborn pride. Having his cake and eating it too. He could do it. But broader considerations were in play now, things he'd never contemplated before.

All he had to do was sell his soul to the devil. It was, at least, the devil he knew. Even the devil told the truth once-in-a-while. If it _were_ true...

"Scorpius."

"Yes, John?"

He hesitated. Weighed it again. Scorpius waited patiently.

"For _them_. Not for you. You take what I give you, and you let me and Earth alone when it's over. You give me what I need to advance my own people – and _you leave and never come back_."

"Acceptable, John. It is cheap at half the price. You have my word, if you will accept that." Scorpius pursed his lips, thought a moment. "I know where your book is, John. I've already sent agents to retrieve it. Yet, I will still accept your terms. This is a mark of my sincerity, no?"

"No. You know I won't accept anything at face value. You will suit action to everything you say. I have a condition. For now, we leave things as they are except..."

Scorpius' coolant was back in place, his calmness returned.

"Except...?"

"I'm in charge. Not negotiable. Any betrayal, I'll kill myself, one way or the other, and you get nothing. My book won't do you a bit of good because I transcribed it in the order it came to me – which means no order at all. You'd never figure it out in time for it to be any good to you. It's easy. Sincerity and honestly and you win your crusade. I'll help you. I even_ think_ I'm getting screwed, and I'll force you to kill me. It's that simple." Scorpius nodded. He _was_ sincere, even if John didn't believe any of it.

"Unfortunately, there is one variable that we cannot leave unattended."

"I know." Scorpius gave orders. "Don't hurt them, if you can avoid it. Aeryn isn't to be touched. Bring her to me when you get her."

He also hoped, as he watched Braca move to obey his orders that boded no good, that in time, they'd forgive him.

* * *

**MIRIYA SAT QUIETLY** in her cell, and contemplated the human sitting across the corridor from her in his own. Jack Crichton. John's father. Unlike most Peacekeepers, Miriya – or rather Iriya – knew her parents. Bavil Mavreldeen and Oirlonaqi Nerrimandi, both lifelong Disruptors, allowed to breed in hopes that the traits that had made them such extraordinary agents would come out in their offspring. Somewhere, Miriya also knew, Iriya had many biological siblings. What and where they were, she did not know. Miriya also knew what she was, although it didn't feel like being artificial, didn't feel like her thoughts and personality was "just" a pastiche of traits of others melded and mixed. Feeling it was not being it, she knew, but it hardly mattered when _your_ reality was all you had.

"I'm my own person." She told her empty cell, but she wasn't so sure anymore. Jack looked up at her words.

"Sorry...?" John looked like him, but not quite. The eyes. The jawline. The lips. The nose was different. His hair was an attractive white she liked.

"You're John's father." He nodded. "I'm Miriya Breannados."

"That's not what that officer called you." Her liaison, Falla Norn – at the moment useless as loomas on a Vorc. She'd infiltrated long ago, all part of the plan, but the advent of John Crichton – pirate – had derailed them quite severely. She smiled to herself. That he most definitely had, and she was frelled if she didn't at least partially enjoy Norn's frustration with it all.

"... and I'm _also_ Iriya Nerrimandi, who is not currently in the mood to converse with anyone."

Understatement of the cycle. Iriya had been repressed by Norn, after their rather heated argument. Iriya wanted out, wanted the freedom to move. Norn had been patient in that irritating way all high Disruptor officers possessed. Iriya had outlined a plan she and Miriya had hatched. Norn has said no after discovering it involved the crew of the _Vengeance. _She'd even intimated contamination, and that had been the firstcrackin the Karreen's carapace. Iriya cited her dispensation. Norn countered with "developing bias'", which Iriya countered with a statement along the lines of that being "frelling dren" which Norn had then called "insubordination and proof of her suspicions". Miriya had been _much_ more reasonable, and Iriya had been shot with a repression agent and what Miriya could sense of her was now scalding angry at pretty much everything that lived. Miriya wondered how much of the accusations were true, but knew better to ask. She had her own suspicions though.

She shrugged at Jack's skeptical look.

"She's an infiltration specialist. I'm her cover. I'm a mnemonic implant, a personality emplate designed to hide her in plain sight." She smiled rather ruefully at him, he thought. "Make sense?" He nodded, after a few moments thought.

"You're an implanted personality? Which of you is real?"

_What was it with Crichtons and that frelling question?_

"I like to think we both are." He nodded, accepting it, and that was something else she discovered she liked about Crichtons. Ask, investigate, accept. No Sebacean would have been so broad-minded in her case.

"My son attracts trouble." He sighed. "I only hope there's a way out of this."

"I know it looks rather daunting. There's always a way. It just has to be found. Don't forget – we're not alone in this." Jack nodded again.

"Your group? No offence, but how are they going to fight _this _ship?"

"You'd be surprised." She smiled again. "My Crichton is rather resourceful." She saw the elder Crichton blink.

"Your _Crichton_?"

Miriya cursed to herself. _You probably weren't supposed to say that around this one._

"It's just what I call the Captain." She replied lamely. "It's just to irritate him."

"I'm not stupid," he told her without heat. "I know my own son to see him." He turned blue eyes she knew well full on her and she saw the same determination in them. _Definitely kin. "_What happened to him out there?"

Miriya shook her head.

"I'm sorry, but that's not for me to tell you, if your son didn't."

Jack looked frustrated.

"I wouldn't treat him differently." Miriya nodded, knew how layered that truly was, but she also knew how "her" Crichton would have taken it.

"I don't think they'd give you the opportunity." The sigh he gave told her he understood that well enough. "He's a very stubborn man." Another nod. The lights in the cell block suddenly dimmed, then brightened. In the distance, there was a short klaxon. He sent her a questioning look.

"Midday alert. A shift change." A short nod. Heavy-shod footsteps marched down the corridor, stopped at their cells. Jack's opened. The two soldiers were heavy troopers, heavily armed and armored.

"What's going on?"

"_Come with us."_ Miriya stood, went to the door.

"What's going on?" She repeated on Jack's behalf.

"_Be quiet, Disruptor." _A cannon pointed her way. _"This doesn't concern you."_

"But it does concern me," Jack told them. "Where are you taking me?"

"_Out."_ The gun waved Jack out and indicated he was to move up the corridor. Before he left, Jack stepped to her door.

"I can't honestly say I know what's going on." He smiled at her. "But if he means anything to you at all, help any way you can." ...and was lead away. Miriya watched him go and frowned. She thought, sighed, and sat back down.

An arn later, John Crichton himself – the one from Earth, appeared at her door.

"Are you liberation or frustration?" She asked, more flippantly than she felt.

"That depends," he told her, face grim.

"On?"

"On what you can bought with."

"I can't be bought. Sorry." He smiled a crooked smile. She'd seen that smile before.

"How about leased? Your choices are running out, Red. Scorpius isn't fond of Disruptors. You help me and you can name your price."

"Really? And if my price is _very_ high?"

John smiled again.

"I won't be the one paying it." She contemplated him. _I wouldn't be so sure._ She thought about it, for about ten microts, then turned her best smile on him.

"I'm expensive, but reasonable."

John gave her a skeptical look, and opened the door.

* * *

**"THE FRELL?"** Haxer ejaculated. The frequency was very low-band, coming through a sensor assembly that scanned for radio anomalies, used to look for cloaked ships like themselves. Damn, but she was good, and a woman after his own heart. He didn't know how she was transmitting, but it wasn't anything with decent broadcast power.

"Vengeance..._ you hear...? ...alling from ...Scorpius... carrier. ...going badly... planning an... assault. Something ...a ...book. Lamm's ...oing... after..."_

They all looked at Crichton, who was frowning. He looked at Aeryn.

"He. Frelling. Wrote it all down." He could see the realization dawning on Aeryn's face. Something else John neglected to tell her.

"He's dead." She said, all dread. "Scorpius won't need him if he has it in some other form. A more _complete_ form."

"No..." Crichton got up. "It still needs interpretation. Even full access to it doesn't mean he understands most of it." He rose. "Scorpius either."

Behind him, Miriya came through again.

_ "Not much ...ime. John, if... staging a rescue... ow's... time."_

"She's right," Aeryn agreed. "You have no choice now."

"I always have a choice." He corrected her. "I don't have to rescue John." He smirked. "I just have to rescue the _book_."

"We don't even know where it is, Boss." Haxer chimed in. "And ours sensors aren't _that _sensitive."

Crichton walked to the hatchway.

"Gear up." He cracked his neck. "We don't have to know – if Scorpius is going after it, _he _knows. We just follow _Lamm_."

"I know Lamm." Aeryn told him, feeling uneasy. If anything went wrong, John would pay with his life. "She's no one to take lightly. We should be careful – they..."

Chak'sa cut her off as a chime sounded from her console.

"Crichton... I am getting very odd energy readings... Hammonside, five hundred motras." Haxer immediately turned back to his board.

"Yup, it's oscillating through the Veshna range – 125, 128, 134... just like..." He frowned. "Wait... it's shifting, as if it were moving... hold on a microt..." He reached over, activated the forward viewscreen. "It's not large, but it was cloaked. It's right... _there._"

Haxer shouted, just as the sleek black square seemingly materialized just off their bow, and Crichton was leaping for the viewscreen controls just as the cloaked Hespa mine exploded, flooding the _Vengeance _with a searing white light.

* * *

**JOHN WATCHED THE GRAPPLES** latch onto the _Vengeance_ and drag it in. At his side, his father. Behind him with a new-seeming-perpetual frown stood Miriya.

"What did you do, John?" His father asked. The look on his face was all suspicion. John resented that for a few moments, realized that was just part of the price he'd have to pay.

"Not just me, Dad. Her. It's necessary." Jack looked at her and Miriya nodded.

"You have odd ideas of 'help'." He told her, to John's frown. She looked away.

"Aeryn's on that ship," and Jack wondered how that justified it.

"I hope it doesn't blow up in your face, son."

"You're going home, Dad. I'm doing what I _have_ to – and _he _helped engineered this situation. It's his fault, not mine – but I have to fix it now." He sighed. "I can't turn away."

Jack looked at his son and Miriya, at the aliens around him and the black-clad apparition that watched the large screen with satisfaction. More guards were coming his way. To escort him back to Earth?

Yes, he thought. He'd rather be there. He didn't know any of these people.

"It'll make sense in the end, Dad. You'll see."

Jack just nodded, turned to follow the guards again.

"I'm not the one you'll have to convince, son."

* * *

**THEY'D STRIPPED HIM TO HIS UNDERWEAR. **

He lay on the floor, eye closed, and contemplated. The air warm, the floor cold.

_Hespa neural mine. Simple principle. Use a wavelength of light that overrides most optic nerves to an intensity that whites out a mind and knocks everyone out. Gotta get me a few. _ He supposed that he should have been flattered they thought him so dangerous as to strip damn-near to his altogether.

After a moment, he sensed a presence, and in no hurry, rose smoothly to a sitting position. Across the cell from him – and he was getting tired that it kept happening – was Aeryn Sun. Just what, he wondered, did the Universe have against him?

For her part, Aeryn felt a sense of _deja vu. _She sitting and waiting, and an unconscious Crichton on the floor. This one had a bit less on, but she found herself oddly not minding that in the slightest. She had no problem looking him over for injuries, not particularly liking the old scars (_far too many_), and fresh, still-healing hurts. The Luxan tattoo of Brotherhood surprised her for a moment, but not really. Out there, _he_ was John Crichton. Out in the widest sense possible.

_How much of a difference,_ she wondered,_ did that make?_

The smooth flex of that well-defined muscle when he sat up told her he was recovered from the mine.

If it just happened to make other parts of her brain and body react, well,_ frell_ – she wasn't dead yet. Besides, if he _was_ also John Crichton, well, she of all people had a perfect right to ogle him.

"Are you alright?" She asked anyway. He nodded, once, rose to his feet.

"Too warm?" He asked, noticed a slight sheen of sweat on her forehead. Peacekeeper brigs were always keep warmer – just a reminder. Jails weren't supposed to be pleasant places, after all.

"No. Just uncomfortable." _I do appreciate the view, although I probably shouldn't._

He flexed himself, trying to loosen cramped muscles, cracked a few joints. Aeryn just watched, not bothering to even pretend she wasn't.

"We appear to be rather deep in it now."

Crichton sat cross-legged on the bench on the opposite wall, relaxed.

"Well, _I _am. Or at least I appear to be." He replied dryly. "You won't be here for long."

Almost on cue, footfalls sounded outside the cell.

"Ah. Your ride's here, Mary-Sue." She arched an eyebrow at him. Two troopers appeared, and she knew the drill well enough.

"I'll..." She began as the door opened.

"No, you won't," he told her, no trace of recrimination, just simple truth. "I don't think he'd like it." A small smile. "Thanks, though."

He made it look like it had just occurred to him.

"Oh, don't be surprised by anything, either."

Aeryn hesitated, gazed at him a microt longer, nodded to herself and was led away. The door closed, and Crichton smiled at the empty room.

"It's not over till it's over." He told no one in particular.

* * *

**THE REST OF THE CREW **of the_ Vengeance _awoke to find themselves in personal nightmares.

Chak'sa awoke to a medical facility, strapped securely to a dissection table and a leering Scorpius. Haxer trapped in the Aurora Chair, at the moment silent and staring with a dark, yet baleful eye. He stared back with a helpless fury and vowed to somehow kill Miriya with his own hands.

Shiv and Thadon fared the worst, although that was subjective. There were no preliminaries. Not considered people by the Peacekeepers in any sense, both were summarily shot while unconscious and dumped down a waste removal chute.

The _Vengeance _locked itself once the crew had been removed, and killed any Peacekeeper unfortunate to remain aboard. She then opened fire with her flank cannons, killing several more, and heavily damaging the bay - and powered up both her main gun and Nebari Lancers. Realizing the sophistication of its AI, Scorpius' techs could do nothing but frantically lock massive dampening grapples on it to prevent its escape or further damaging the bay or the Carrier. The Main Cannon could have crippled a huge section of the Carrier – but the Lancers could have torn a hole in it that could have crippled it for _monens_.

They couldn't destroy it, so they in essence knocked the _Vengeance_ unconscious.

* * *

**IN HIS CELL****,** Crichton knew nothing of the fate of his crew.

He knew that John wouldn't resist for long, and that he would be along soon enough. He knew his crew would sort themselves out, of that he had no doubt, but, unfortunately, first things first.

A man needed his rest, so Crichton took a nap.

First things first.


	4. Chapter 4

**TALYN BANKED AROUND THE MOON** of the gas giant with an easy grace, smelling the sulfurous volcanoes belching high into space beneath him. Behind him, a half-dozen Prowlers followed, black and red needles dogging his every metra. He was content to keep them just in range, enjoying the gravity play of this moon and its giant parent. Crais, mind meshed and calm, kept his eyes on the tracking arrays. Just outside the red planet, they'd been ambushed by a small Marauder with an immobilizer cannon, but they'd managed to destroy it before it could do much damage. A glancing shot had numbed his Hammonside propulser, but it passed quickly. Crais was content to let Talyn enjoy his power.

A shot flashed past him as a Prowler came into range, but Talyn simply accelerated slightly and it dropped back behind. It had been part of a dozen that had leapt upon he and his mother over the moon of Crichton's homeworld. He had destroyed several in her defence, and had led the rest – he hoped – away from Moya. She had fled to Earth – one of the warmer oceans – to hide, if possible. Past that, he knew little of what was going on – even his Captain was not privy to events.

_We will do as requested,_ he'd answered when queried. _We will play our roles._

Protect his mother and wait. Those had been their instructions – a "request" from Crichton. They would "know when", he'd told the Captain. In the meantime... protect, harass, destroy if necessary. It was a pleasure, Talyn concluded, to do all. "Fun", the Nebari would have called it. Talyn could not disagree.

Ahead, a great red baleful storm, like a great eye on the giant world before him, and Talyn banked toward it, sliding through the heavy magnetic field as a surfer rode waves. Memories of shedding static charges ghosted from Elack's thoughts, Leviathans often using the magnetospheres of gas planets to discharge the static buildup on their skins after starbursts. Behind him, the Prowlers changed course in their pursuit, continuing to follow.

Talyn dove for that colossal eye, pulled up sharply as he sliced through mammoth gale forces, lightning blasts half-a-million metras long. He rolled and bucked and rode the winds and came back into space exhilarated.

Only two Prowlers had managed the ride, and one of those was heavily damaged. Even as Talyn turned about, the Prowler succumbed to the giant's gravity and vanished back into the thick atmosphere. The other came on, firing furiously. If Talyn could have shrugged, he would have, and destroyed the last Prowler with a single shot from a dorsal cannon.

Without a backward scan, he turned, almost casually, and headed back into the system, back toward Earth.

* * *

**"KOIBAN – HAVE YOU SEEN - "**

Evigan Koiban counted again and nodded to himself. Yes. He was definitely missing two vials of his Emorphis agent. Or he just miscounted. No, he'd counted three times already. He sighed, moved to count again.

"Reality to Koiban," the basso profundo of Ka'D'argo's voice turned him from it. The Luxan stood behind him, arms crossed.

"Captain – apologies." He gestured to his pharmacopoeia. "Just doing inventory."

"Have you seen Chiana?"

"Yes. She was on her way to Moya's main data access, she said." D'Argo frowned.

"Reading? That's not really like her." D'Argo nodded his thanks, and left.

Koiban watched him go for a microt and then began counting again.

* * *

**DOWN IN MOYA'S DATA ACCESS,** D'Argo found Chiana reading intently, sitting at one of the stations Moya had grown for direct access to her data stores. He laid a hand on her shoulder, bent over to look at the screen.

"Don't take this the wrong way, but you never struck me as all that technically-minded." He told her. Glowing bluely on the screen were what appeared to be blueprints. She shrugged absently.

"Just curious." She flipped to the next 'page'. D'Argo suddenly recognized the blueprints.

"Are you looking up _Carrier specs_?"

"Yup. You'd be amazed at the data Moya has now. Granted, these are as illegal as all Hezmana to have." She grinned. "Not that we give a frell."

"Are you looking for something _specific_?" She nodded again, as he pulled a chair over, sat.

"I don't know what's gonna happen. But he's got a plan – you know he has." D'Argo agreed. That was as likely. "So, I figured it wouldn't hurt to be on hand to help – just in case."

Moya was floating calmly in one of Earth's oceans – the "Indian" one, if the intercepted news reports were to be believed. So far, they were being left alone. That wouldn't last, he knew.

"So you come here to read up on Carrier engines."

"Not exactly." She leaned back, kissed him unexpectedly. He was pleasantly surprised. She pointed at two specific things on the blueprints. She smiled. "How're _Lo'Lhaa's_ targeting sensors?"

D'Argo got a good look at where her fingers indicated, found himself smiling. He stood.

"They're good, but a bit of fine-tuning never hurt." He stopped before turning into the corridor. "Let me know if you find anything else interesting."

"Oh, don't you worry." Chiana flipped pages, chuckled. "I will."

* * *

**THE MONITOR LISTENED.** It collated. It reprogrammed several of its cerebral nodes and tested those. No dichotomies developed. It listened to its visitor and its proposal and it evaluated. Eventually, it created several new cerebral nodes and compared the proposal to its functional database and weighed it against further operational protocols.

Again, no computational dichotomies.

Machines didn't think in the sense organic brains did. However, machines with the capabilities of the Monitor, the one million and thirty-first of its kind, _especially_ left to its own procedural devices for over two and a half _billion_ cycles, _did_ eventually develop certain... glitches, if one could call them such. It had been designed, after all, to be operationally flexible – its nano-sized quantum processors could certainly _approximate_ thought, and do it quite well if the situation called for it. It attempted to question its visitor, but realized that it spoke only with a preprogrammed message, and certainly wasn't sophisticated enough past a quirky machine code to answer any questions.

On the converse side, the proposal offered would likely render it inoperable – or destroy it altogether. Certain protocols opposed such deliberate self-destruction – or at least events that could lead to it. On the categorical side – it _did_ fall neatly into operational parameters to protect the Profundity.

It came down, it realized, to a simple choice between the two most difficult positions any mind could take: yes or no.

The Monitor removed itself from the third planet, scanned the Carrier in orbit and fell back to the Aperture.

Then it decided.

* * *

**"SOMETIMES I'M LAUGHING,"** she heard from the cell. Mirl Vos, Second Adjunct Guard under Captain Xcul, was in no hurry on her rounds. Her only prisoner had been quiet. Now he seemed to be intoning some odd verse. His voice was low, but steady.

_"What am I, but an excuse for dreams/what am I, but the reason for dust/what I am is the keeper of screams/what I am, the begetter of rust." _ He sighed, or seemed to. _"I am a stranger still in a stranger land/farther from home than I have even known/where have I been that I cannot roam/where can I go when I'm beyond alone?"_

"Hey," She called at him, saw him sitting on the cot against the wall. The pirate. She took in a muscular form and not-unappealing features and felt only disgust that he was an alien and at her own reactions. "Enough caterwauling."

"Well, that's disillusioning." His smile was insolent. She wandered away. He waited.

She came back a few microts later.

"What was that, anyway?" She tried to sound disinterested.

"_Lament of the Sentinel_." He ran a hand through his hair. "It's an Ek'sm dirge." He added, elucidating: "They're the sage-keepers of the N'sharrasti."

She just stared at him.

"It's a battle song." he lied.

"Odd damn battle song." She growled, walked away again. She didn't come back.

"Odd damn universe." He told her shrinking shadow, fading footfalls.

They were replaced, a little while later, by heavier ones.

_Took him long enough_. Crichton got himself comfortable.

"I really wish you'd see reason."

"I was. She dumped me for disbelief. Capricious, fickle bitch, that one."

"Your crew is gone. You should know that. Two they shot."

"Which two?" He didn't seem fazed at all by that announcement.

"The ones with the blades." He shrugged.

"You just let it happen." Not an accusation, although it could have been.

"The other two are going to be interrogated." Another shrug. _The hell?_

"They're just wasting their time." He put his head back. "Where's Miriya?"

John crossed his arms, frowned. Was he really _that_ indifferent to their fates?

"She's safe – as safe as a Disruptor can get, I guess."

"She's something, isn't she?" A chuckle, like ice in an empty glass. "A real piece of work. She's been modified to go straight for your balls."

"I noticed. I'm immune." A lie. Crichton chuckled. Yeah, he didn't believe it.

"Uh-huh."

"I have Aeryn with me. Away from you."

Crichton gave him an odd look, eyebrow arched. He put his head back down.

"Want a medal? You're boring. Get to the point or frell off."

John stomped off, came back. Not going the way he'd planned. He didn't have much time for this.

"Help me save this. Help me do this. I can save billions! More!"

"I don't do crusades. Why should I? What's in it for me?"

"Your life –_ freedom_."

Crichton scoffed.

"Is that all?" John began pacing. His counterpart stayed comfortable. "You can't give me that. You can't guarantee anything. _You_ did _this_. I don't owe you anything." He stood, cracked his neck. "I could have fixed this days ago."

"Help me now!"

"No. You need to seriously consider what you're doing." He padded to the door, looked John in the eye. "I'm going to _undo_ it."

"You can't. I've made a deal with Scorpius. _You_ pushed me to this. You _forced_ me into this! You should have stayed away – none of this would have happened."

Crichton sent him a look of pity. John immediately hated him for it.

"Who are you talking to?" He shook his head. "You're trying too hard. Ask Aeryn what she'd think of _that_, John."

"Leave her out of it." He balled a fist, smacked it against the wall. "She's got nothing to do with you!"

Crichton smirked.

"I wonder if I shouldn't take her from you." A derisive chuckle. "Just for her own good, mind you."

"You won't get the chance!" Flustered, angry. Good. "You can't!" The fact that he was in no position to do anything, most likely to be killed before the day was out didn't register with John. Crichton knew the pressure he was under, knew what he was trying to do. Something perverse in him just egged him on, however.

"How do you know I haven't already?"

"Fine. This was your last chance. I'll do it without you." He stomped off, incensed, and in Crichton's head, Harvey muttered.

_I would have preferred a finer touch there, John._

Had to see how deep it runs, Harve.

_He's a full-blown enemy now._ _That's unfortunate._

No ...he's not. He's trying to keep it all and win, he wants to be a martyr, the saviour of Earth and the Father of some frelling Golden Age.

_ Didn't you want that once? When you were one, I mean. It will be a disaster. Scorpius will keep no bargains – not to get what he wants, not the moment he has it._

I'm gonna give John _some_ credit, Harve. Not much, but some. He's walking a razor here.

_ Are we not? _

Not yet.

_ Shivi'na and Thadon. Was he telling the truth?_

Yeah. Doesn't matter.

_ So... we just...?_

Wait.

* * *

**AERYN SUN** was not a happy woman. She was a little too famous for her liking, feeling the stares and mutters as she was marched through the corridors.

Not that she cared. Things were spiralling out of control. She fervently hoped there was a plan, because it looked like everything was pretty much frelled.

_Who do you trust, Aeryn?_ A little voice in her head asked her. _Who_ can _you trust?_ Decisions, decisions...

Could it be as simple as just deciding what I _want_? Can I even afford to make that decision – especially _now_?

_ How can you afford not to?_

Frell, frell, damn, dren and frell.

She turned the corridor to Command.

_ "Because I'm going to fail if I do it that way, and I do have choices."_

She was starting to wonder. _Perhaps it wasn't so much a matter of choosing_, that little voice told her, _but of choosing_ circumstances? You can only control what you can control.

She stepped into Command, saw him, saw her, saw Earth before them, space beyond.

"So I'll fail and have only the pieces left over. That's life. That's my fate."

_I can control what I want_, she told herself. _All I know now though is what I _don't.

She took a deep breath, stepped in, and waited.

* * *

** JOHN ROBERT CRICHTON**, lately of Earth, stood on the huge command deck of Scorpius' Carrier, and watched techs scramble. He had one chance and he knew it. Scorpius' forceful and impassioned speech had affected him, and he knew it had because it had the truth in it.

That didn't mean, however, that he gave a rat's ass about any of this because Scorpius was supposedly doing all he had from some notion of twisted nobility. He remembered her lying dead and still, his heart shredded and choking him, remembered howling in anguish and gibberish and wishing for death, his mind invaded and raped by the very progenitor of his seemingly-never-ending misery, the clone viciously carrying on.

'_Handled poorly_,' Scorpius had called it. That was a goddamned epic understatement if there ever was one.

Scorpius could fry. If even a little of the footage he'd seen had been true, he'd have been unable to look away, to not want to do _something. If _the Scarrans knew about him, _if_ they ever came here... he shuddered. Earth a smashed and raped wasteland? He couldn't, wouldn't risk it.

His duplicate was wrong. He thought that he would just succumb, that his time on Earth had made him weak, just the scientist again, no big badass like the supposed "pirate". That he just chose to forget.

The _hell_. He hadn't forgotten _anything._

He'd be damned if he'd do it blind, do it without his own conditions, and Scorpius could go to every hell imaginable.

He had hard choices to make. He could make them, despite what that scarred-up asshole below thought.

He watched Scorpius direct Braca in the running of the Carrier, felt his hate swirl. Let it roll through him for a minute, then pushed it down.

He couldn't afford hate. He'd make mistakes.

Behind him, he heard Miriya fidget, wondered if her betrayal of his "brother" bothered her. She was too dangerous, he assessed. Too mercurial. Too ready to swap allegiances, too dangerous to him personally, because - he admitted to himself, she _was_ so damned attractive to him. It didn't matter that he knew she'd been altered to be that way. It didn't matter that his loyalty was to Aeryn. In the right circumstances, with no Aeryn in the picture... _goddamn._

Here was truth he knew. The Other - in a way, his backup. Encrypted or not, eventually there'd be a way through the blocks. It made John as he was now, even fully unlocked – expendable, if necessary.

Unacceptable.

He was going to lose a lot. He knew that. But this wasn't just about him any longer. He'd said it himself: _I have a planet to uplift – and billions to save._

_I can only live with it._

"Scorpius," he called. The half-breed looked up. "I want your troops off Earth."

"No, John. I must draw the line somewhere. Your family free, you will have free reign on this ship, but I will not give up everything."

_Shit._ That was a longshot, and he'd known it when he'd asked.

"Fine". John knew the chaos below. People were starting to panic. You couldn't keep this sort of thing quiet for long. "When?"

"When I'm satisfied." He gestured to Braca, who nodded and left the Deck. "You needn't worry, John. Do your work, keep your word and all will be well. I don't want this planet. I only want what you know. As I said. Why should I lie to you? I have, as you say, all the cards. In this instance, the simple truth is more than enough." One leather-clad hand fell on his shoulder, and he refused to flinch. "However, my patience, while legendary, is not infinite. You will begin work immediately."

John didn't look at him, just watched Earth's moon rotate slowly below. Somewhere out there was Talyn – and the patrols Scorpius had hunting for him. John couldn't help them. Moya floating in the Indian Ocean. Scorpius said he had no interest. A lie, but he couldn't help her, either.

He had other worries.

"When Aeryn gets here, Scorp. Not until." Scorpius nodded, a short jerk of his head. He merely patted John on the shoulder.

"_Not_ infinite." Then he left the Deck.

He heard and felt her come nearer.

"I hate that bastard, just on principle." Miriya said from close behind him. "But that's probably universal." She looked at him skeptically. "Are you really going to help him?"

"Give me alternatives. If I don't he scoops out my brain and screws my planet. This way, I win."

The look she gave him then was one of complete skeptical disbelief.

"_Win_? If he gets wormholes... we're all _frelled_. The Scarrans will go to war the instant they think they've lost any lead. Wormholes or not, a Hezmana of a lot of people are going to pay for your ambition."

"Ambition?" He almost laughed. "I wish."

She stepped closer, and he almost shoved her away. Too dangerous. Too damned distracting. He could not have her near him for long!

"Please tell me you have a plan. You Crichtons _always_ have a frelling plan!" That slowed him. Made him resent her for a moment, which helped. _Hard choices, John. Make them, or die damned. _ He felt the weight on him, felt it like a slavering ghoul riding his shoulders and dripping slime and obscene truths in his ears, and with every step the fiend got heavier and heavier. He felt "finished" in more ways than he could articulate, felt defeated, made defeated, was defeated.

Pyrrhus, his mentor, his brother, whispered in his ear.

"Miriya, are you even real in there? Which of you is? Do either of you even know for sure?"

She blinked, was instantly angry, just as quickly it went away.

"That depends," she answered cautiously, after a moment. "It's irrelevant."

"No, it's _very_ relevant. The problem with life is that we live it surrounded by necessary lies. The truth of objective reality is so terrifying that we _have_ to lie. Our minds couldn't take it. We redefine reality to suit us; it'll destroy us otherwise."

Miriya snorted. _A philosophy lesson? Now?_

"You scoff, but it's as close to truth as we ever get. This is _important_." He glanced at the monitor that looked into his doppelganger's cell. _He_ was sitting calmly, looking at the camera. Miriya just nodded. John sounded defeated, yet... defiant. She started to wonder just to whom he was actually addressing this, was a little doubtful it was to her alone. She could see a few techs actually listening in.

"The person who can face reality without illusions is the most dangerous alive, they'd be a wolf among sheep, they'd see everything with crystal-sharpness. You couldn't hide _anything._ They exist, but they don't live long." He looked away from the Crichton far below.

"The rest of us forbid it. We create elaborate religions and philosophies and give deep meaning to things that are at their basic just chemical responses – love, hate, anger, fear. Just chemicals and electricity, matter and void." He looked at the main display, at the blackness and stars. "Did you know that 90% of everything is actually _empty space_? Think about it. Even matter is just energy – it's not really 'solid' – nothing is, it's just energy stuck in one form until it devolves and becomes something else. The universe doesn't waste anything, you know. It reuses _every_thing it makes. Like Carl said – we're starstuff, the universe knowing itself. Everything was something else once, birthed from fusion furnaces."

He shook his head, looked amused.

"That's utterly _terrifying_. When I first learned that, it stunned my whole brain. For a month I obsessed with that fact. I'd look at myself and think _holy crap. I'm mostly not there at all." _He patted himself over._ "_Just energy and nothingness. I stopped thinking about it. Had to - even now, just saying it, I can feel that sick feeling crawling up my spine, swirling at the back of my head. I think about something else. I have to, or … I don't know. I just know it scares the shit outta me."

He waved a hand at the space out there. "All of that – and even saying "all of that" is completely subjective... all of that is the same. Some energy, mostly space, void, emptiness." He sighed, looked back at her. She was looking at him with a mixture of pity and fascination.

_God help me._ He sighed a long sigh.

"Christ Almighty, what a helluva thing."

"You think interesting things, but you really need to..." He cut her off.

"Scorpius, though, he thinks he's one of these beings, a wolf - but he's _wrong._ He's so convinced of his truth that he never noticed when that intricate web of deception he weaves became a substitute. He _creates_ truth, y'know? Not the truth, _a_ truth, Scorpius' truth and then he forces everything to conform with it. Anything that disrupts that truth is automatically opposition. He crushes it. Only rarely will he accept it, only then when he has no choice, and _only _then will he alter his truth to fit. You know what? The sumbitch _gets away with it_!" He shook his head, almost in admiration.

"I need someone to understand. I have to do that. I _have_ to accept his truth and I _have_ to make it work so I can save my planet and the people I care about."

Miriya just shook her head, not buying any of it. It smacked of an elaborate excuse for self-pity, of some kind of …absolution.

"There's nothing wrong with that! It's not a crime to want to save..." He cut her off again.

"Yes, yes, there is. There's a lot wrong with it. Because I'm going to fail if I do it that way, and I _do_ have choices. So I'll fail and have only the pieces left over. That's life. That's my fate."

Aeryn had at last arrived. She'd overheard the last part. Miriya sighed, turned at her footfalls.

"_Finally_ – sense! Could you talk a little into him please, if anyone can?" Aeryn stopped near her, disdain writ plain on her features.

"You're wrong, John."

"Listen to her, John, she's..." Aeryn sent her a withering gaze.

"Get your priorities straight, Disruptor – before you lose the ability to choose." Miriya clamped her mouth shut, backed off.

"I'm not wrong, Aeryn, and you know it." He sighed. He turned to her, but she would come no closer. There was something in the way she stood. He felt his heart sink a little. Her eyes were guarded.

"You are. But I won't stop you." He blinked. He'd expected far more opposition.

"But... you won't help me, either?" She shook her head.

"Of course I will. Like you, I'll do what I have to do. We came here in no small part because I told you we should. I'm as responsible for this as you are."

"I need to begin," he told her. "I have no time left."

"What do want me to do?" She asked him. Miriya crossed her arms, set herself.

"I want you to go get my book. I'll need it. Only you are to touch it. It's in Australia."

"Wait - " Miriya interjected. "You told me it was in Nevada at that mountain base."

John gave her a wan smile.

"One is. The real one is in Australia. Sarah Marchand has it."

"I'll need a Prowler." She simply turned and marched away before he said anything either way, permission or denial. Something ...changed as she walked away, and he felt it keenly. He glanced at the monitor. _Damn him. Damn him to hell._

"Give her a Prowler." He told Braca, who hesitated, then nodded. John looked back at Miriya, waited until Aeryn had left.

"I don't need her anymore." He told Braca again. It sounded final, and that's how Braca took it. Miriya started to protest as Braca signalled guards. As she was led away, she struggled, but at the door, she quieted, and John just nodded to himself.

He didn't feel safe. Not yet. He thought about what the Other had said.

John turned to the monitor. On it, his duplicate, for a moment, appeared as if he looked directly at John, who felt a stab of anger go through him as he watched Crichton smile in his cell. Somewhere deep in his guts, he felt a passing regret, but his voice was flat. He had no choice. Last chances. There weren't as many of them as there used to be.

"Deal with him." He turned away. "I don't care how. He's too dangerous. Deal with him." Braca nodded and marched out.

_It's a helluva thing._

* * *

**IT WAS DARK.**

Uncoiling himself from the sensor-opaque locker Thadon had somehow managed to cram him into, Stark stepped into a silent corridor. Along the floor, dim red lights outlined the walls. The _Vengeance _was offline. A cautious and slow slink to Command told the same tale.

The ship was dead.

_ No_, not entirely. A few systems were at bare power, just dim blues and whites, slowly throbbing like a great creature's pulse – _sleeping_, not dead. He felt a surge of relief. What diagnostics he could run – absolute basic systems the only thing still working - told him of the sensor blinds and electronic shackles rendering _Vengeance _quiescent. His relief vanished when locational sensors told him he was sitting squarely in one of the lesser landing bays on Scorpius' Carrier. It had been heavily damaged, and was in a vacuum. That was both good and bad.

He sat for a long while, and pondered, thought, debated. What could he risk? There was no way he could free the ship from the inside. He knew not how many Peacekeepers were outside, if any. Their armor doubled as a spacesuit when necessary. He did not know what was actually running – whether he could use a passive scan, an exterior camera or even a portal. What might give him away? Frell. He didn't know enough. He struggled with it, but managed internal sensors, a recording of what happened to the crew. He watched the crew rendered unconscious. He watched the Peacekeepers board.

He watched Shiv and Thadon shot and then dumped into the landing bay's waste chute.

Yes.

He'd start there.

* * *

** WHEN THE TWO GUARDS CAME FOR HIM**, he just smiled to himself and waited. When they cuffed him, he simply shrugged and went. When they finally marched him down a hissing auxiliary corridor with a heavy door at the end, he knew what it meant.

One guard reached for the airlock controls. The other removed his cuffs.

_"Courtesy of John Crichton,"_ one told him, obviously relishing telling him.

Crichton chuckled and killed him first.

He'd waited long enough.


	5. Chapter 5

** CHAK'SA BAVMORDA** feared _nothing_.

Well, nothing sentient. Nothing mortal.

She'd seen death in all its facets, seen sentients die in merciless and savagely vicious ways and had employed such methods herself in her endless bouts in the Arena. She did not fear pain or suffering. Nothing Peacekeepers could do to her would break her. She'd been brutalized by experts who had forgotten more about brutality than Peacekeepers would ever know.

That was not to say she did not have her fears. Ever since Haxer –_ Ander_ - yes, she preferred that name for him – had come into her life, she'd learned that there _were_ things that _could_ unsettle her, despite all she'd endured. They'd come on gradually, before she'd really noticed. That time on Roppa Wekin - that stinking slaver hole, when she thought she'd lost him – that had been a queasy fear she had not liked at all. On Genki'dalen, when it looked like he was – not telling her beforehand - going to marry that Kilishio whore - simply for convenience, mind you – that had been a odd kind of fear she'd not recognized. Not right away. It just moved her and she'd excused it away afterward as necessity or something equally false.

She never thought of love as a kind of fear, but it apparently was, and it felt like a rather good kind of selfish. Except for now. She wondered where he was, if he was alright and then admonished herself for the distraction.

Not now. Later.

_There _would _be a later_, she vowed. If he were dead... she would redefine the meaning of slaughter for the Peacekeepers. That thought gave her the strength to face her captors calmly. She knew little of Scorpius outside of what Ander had told her, as sketchy and hateful as that had been, but she didn't doubt it was as accurate as he'd been capable at the time of remembering.

Chak'sa was strapped, in a semi-recline, to a bed in what was obviously a medical wing of the Command Carrier. Across from her, a dark-skinned woman – the director of the base on Earth. Chak'sa could see the faint blue shimmer of a stasis field around her.

The gladiator was naked, but that didn't concern her. She'd fought before thousands in similar states of nudity. She could kill efficiently clothed or otherwise.

Scorpius came to her bedside, along with a half-dozen medtechs. As they scanned her, he looked her over carefully, a barely-disguised leer on his face.

"You... are one of Staleek's so-called 'Trues' aren't you?" He looked her up and down again. "One of his 'Chosen', I'd wager." Chak'sa merely stared at him and said nothing.

"I have your comrades," Scorpius told her. "Their fates could depend on your answers to my questions." He smiled at her. "You were – _are_ – aren't you?"

"I cannot be replicated." She told him, finally. He shook his head.

"Of that I completely agree. But we _do_ have some few things in common. You see, _I_ was an _attempt_. _I _was the _first_ – although I see they refined the technique quite efficiently after they birthed me."

Chak'sa studied him. Yes, he was the one. She'd heard the Scarran techs argue. The 'Mistake', the "Animal Blend'...

"The Abomination." she told him, nodding. "That was you." Not a question. She watched the white-hot rage spear through his eyes, abate with alacrity.

"Their creation. One they will pay for, I assure you." He took a few steps back, looked at a tech that was still in the process of scanning her. The tech shook her head.

"You do not have the gland. No heat pulse. Curious." He fixed a cold glare on her. "Why don't you?"

"I was... defective." He shook his leather-wrapped head. "They considered us _all_ abominations."

"No... not _you_. You are _exceedingly well_ blended." He frowned. "Not perfectly though. You are, like me, an _earlier_ model." He appeared to ponder.

"I rose to that blend on a mountain of raped and murdered sisters. I was rejected as weak." She saw no harm in telling him. The information could not help the Peacekeepers. The Scarrans had long ago abandoned the project that had birthed her and all before her. If they killed her for it, she would not go down easy.

"But you survived. No heat pulse... no need for Crystherium U_tilia_, either." He scratched his chin, thoughtful. "You've not suffered for it's lack. Now how can this be? A Scarran that does not need the Mother Plant... no, they would _not_ have simply let you go..."

Chak'sa scoffed. 'Let her go?' Not hardly. She decided to say no more. There was no profit in it.

"Tell me... what are you _really_?" He pondered her. "Would they think so far ahead...?" He smiled a predatory smile at her. "You are too dangerous, my dear. Your immunity would make them unstoppable."

She blinked. She'd never thought of it that way, and she was surprised it had never occurred to her – she was immune. Free of it. What puzzled her more was how those who created her dismissed it so blithely – a serious oversight... _if_ it had been one. Scorpius was no longer paying any attention to her. A machine was descending from the ceiling. It looked like a multi-legged spider, covered in razors and spines. She flexed her arms, but her restraints didn't flex with them. She exerted all of her considerable physical power, but she may as well had been trapped in amber. She was going nowhere.

"Full, deep-cell scan," He commanded the medtechs. "Complete rendering, down to her base molecular structure. I _will_ know why. We do not know how perfect this technique has become. Scarrans that look indistinguishable from Sebaceans? That cannot be overlooked." Scorpius looked back to her.

"If you ever entertained vengeance against your creators... cold comfort, yes, but what happens next will greatly speed that vengeance to its conclusion." He shook his head, seemingly in regret. "A pity you shan't see it."

Chak'sa hissed at him as he walked away, and the machine above her whined to life. The faceless medtech waved a hand over the tablet in her hand.

The machine uncoiled, and the whine became a purr of deadly intent.

Chak'sa, despite herself, began to scream.

* * *

** WHAT, HE WONDERED, **were they frelling waiting for? He'd been locked into the Aurora Chair for three arns now, and nothing had happened. A tech came by every half-arn and checked the Chair and then left. Haxer knew not all torture was bloody and screaming. This certainly qualified, but he'd long since stopped being either apprehensive or angry and had started to think. Somewhere on this scow Cha was waiting, and he'd be damned if she'd wait long. What they could be doing to her flamed through his mind and dissipated. It'd be their damn funerals. He could crash this Carrier with three keystrokes if anything happened to her – and _would_, in a cold microt.

Where _was_ that Hezmana-cursed tech?

Ah. There. Right on time. Punctuality was a trait Hax admired. He remembered long ago, when he'd lived on a Carrier, that he'd been in some demand around the mess tables. His stories and jibes were much treasured by his comrades in the Tech Division.

After all, if there was one thing a master of language could do – it was _talk._

Haxer smiled at the tech, a rather plain girl in that ugly brown bag the low-rankers always seemed to end up in – he'd hated them, his had chafed _every_where way back when – got her attention.

Then he started talking.

* * *

** THE ARMOR DIDN'T FIT PROPERLY,** but it would do until he got where he was going. The rifle was standard issue, nothing compared to his _Forge_, but it would efficiently kill, and that's all it had to do. A quick one-two on a local console, and he knew where the _Vengeance_ was berthed, locked down and caged. He growled under his breath. The idea of shackles on that lady made him angry. He had to get her out of there.

So. John tried to off him. Not entirely unexpected, if the trooper wasn't just bullshitting him. Either way, he cared little. This Carrier was going down – and if John happened to be on it when it did, he'd try to remember to give a damn. He perused the console, grinned to himself. The _Vengeance_ had punched a hole or two in the bay as they tried to chain her – and they'd just left it exposed to vacuum. To deter anyone trying to get to her.

They obviously didn't know him very well.

Right. First things first. Find his crew. Find Shiv. Find Hax, find Cha. Easy. Then - kill John, kill Scorpius, destroy Carrier, go home.

This console was only a simple info kiosk, and he didn't have time to try and hack it into anything useful. He'd have to find them the old-fashioned way.

_Yeah. Easy._ Everything's been _such_ a cakewalk so far.

_Frell._

He adjusted his armor, tried to look official and blend in and stepped into the transit corridor, a main artery in the massive ship, like a freeway that ran through the centre of the Carrier. Staying calm and giving off the impression he belonged there, he'd managed half-a-klick when he heard a hiss, and a hand beckoned him from a dark alcove. He halted, took a step, halted.

He recognized that hand. At a pair of feet he also recognized lay a trooper, stretched out face down.

Miriya Breannados kicked a prone guard at her feet – to make sure – and looked him over.

"You couldn't find a taller guard?" Her voice was clipped, clear, and had an edge to it. _Not Miriya_. He and she seemed like a decently-matched pair, all four of them, he mused.

"Iriya, right?" He stepped in, looked over the other two bodies at her feet he'd missed seeing the first time. Formidable lady.

"I'd say 'nice to meet you', but that'd just be an unnecessary formality." She frowned at him, arched an eyebrow. She understood him perfectly well.

"I only share this body, _not_ the inclinations."

"Well... regardless. Thanks for sharing. I appreciated every magnificent dench." She planted long-fingered hands on shapely hips. Around one wrist was still fastened her restraints. Her lips curled into a slight smile - he avoided trying to read anything into it.

"I can always call for help, you know." He put his hands up in mock surrender.

"What's wrong with Miriya?"

"Sulking. She does not like being 'dismissed'." He gave her a wry look.

"You two have no idea how dangerous you really are."

"I assure you we do. Only too well." She frowned again. Not a look he liked on that face.

"On your way somewhere?"

"Your counterpart ordered my execution. I am, as they say, passingly vexed." Crichton shook his head.

"That's a charitable way of putting it. Me, they tried to space. I just think, however, _they_ interpreted it that way." _He doesn't have the guts, not as long as Aeryn exists._

"Do you believe that?" He shrugged.

"Doesn't matter anymore." Crichton stepped back into the shadows as armed troopers stomped by, pulled her close to him in the shadows, whispered,

"You helped him, anyway, though. Gave him our cords for that damn neural mine. Probably your idea, too. Who _should_ I be pissed off at?" He asked her casually. Iriya blinked. "Yeah, I know. It's not the first time you've done it, either."

"If it is hardly a surprise," Iriya looked him straight in the eye. "You have no right to outrage."

"Do I _look_ angry?" More foot clatter, they tucked themselves further back. She pressed herself closer to him. "You sent those bounty hunters after me and Crais, too. Cost me my eye, got me killed."

Iriya simply nodded, said dryly, "You recovered quite well." It was past the time for keeping old secrets – especially when they were hardly secrets any longer.

"You were also the reason the Revenger found us in the Nexus."

Again, the straightforward nod. If she had any trepidation over these revelations, she hid it well. He knew to her – as Iriya – it was only her job, nothing remotely personal.

_Only the Way, the Trade. It is not personal and never has been._

She had, in an oblique way, lent him another layer to that perspective Iskijji had taught him a lifetime ago, one he might not have gained otherwise, a valuable perspective on certain realities that swirled through his semblance of life. He resented her for none of it. She'd been altered against her will to artificially want him, to pretty much prostitute herself for no guaranteed gain, and it had been a failed gambit thanks to his inhibitor – well, _Iriya_ had to be forced to it, even if Miriya hadn't, but it was still Iriya's body. As far as he was concerned, that mitigated a lot of whatever 'underhandedness' she might have pulled. So far, it had done more for him than out-and-out against him.

You blamed the one who pulled the trigger, not the gun itself.

"You gonna help me?"

"Yes." Short and simple. Yeah, he liked this lady just fine, in spite of it all. He'd played along and he'd taken advantage. There was no innocence to be claimed by anyone.

"You share Miriya's computer skills?"

"They're _my_ computer skills. She shares too many things as it is." If there was recrimination in there, he couldn't hear it. "You wish to find the rest of the crew?"

He nodded. Obviously. She looked him up and down, gestured to the guard she'd kicked.

"He's your height and weight, and he's a higher rank. I suggest you swap. You're lucky there are more techs on this ship than soldiers." He just took her at her word and began to swap. She watched the corridor, glanced back on occasion. From seemingly nowhere, she asked:

"How and when?"

He knew what she meant.

"Frankly? Suspected early on. Wasn't till Abbanerex that I knew for sure. Then it was just a matter of math, so to speak."

"What?"

"_Oukka_-level command codes. I'm also kinda experienced with having more than one voice in my head." She nodded, her frown still in place. He smiled crookedly at her. "To be honest, aside from the privilege of your... company, I figured intimacy would probably make one of you careless." Another absent nod, a deeper frown.

"A ...calculated risk, I will admit." It sounded like she sighed then, after a moment, but he couldn't be sure. Her frown vanished. "Why didn't you...?"

"Your job was to get wormhole tech outta me or have me lead you to John. Failing either, I probably would have got a hole in my head one morning after." He straightened the chest piece of his new armor, snapped it closed. "The relevant question here is: why didn't _you_?"

"The parameters changed." He finished, ducked back with her as more clatter went by.

"You didn't change them, I suspect. Those new and improved pheromones?" A sharp, angry nod. She turned to face him in the dark. Their faces were close. She blinked, hadn't heard him.

"Why don't they work?" She could feel the smile on his lips. He came closer, and kissed her unexpectedly, softly. She let him, even returned it. There was no man-for-woman passion in the kiss, but there _was_ emotion in it, and Iriya realized that, even after all this time, the thousand he'd given her lips before, this was the first _genuine_ kiss _she'd_ ever received. She filed it away for later consideration – as to whether she'd liked it or not. In the back of her head Miriya snickered insolently and Iriya just waved her off with a "yes, yes", and told her to think about their current situation.

They had greater concerns.

"They do," he told her, against her lips. He stepped back. "...but I cheat."

She had been correct. The armour did fit better. He gave her a pulse pistol, which she hid expertly, and stashed an extra on himself.

"Where were they taking you?" Business, but a subtle change had come between them. Some ...thing between them had dissipated.

"Interrogation, most likely. There's a computer hub at the end of this transit." He dropped the helmet into place, leveled his rifle at her.

_"Well, then, prisoner, put your restraints back on and let's get a move on." _She did, then hesitated.

"Thank you," she told him, not quite sure she was thanking him, or for what.

_ "You don't owe me anything," _he told her. Iriya knew that he was somehow offering her both an ending... and the freedom of something... new. It was the oddest feeling, and she only knew that she was grateful to him, even though she knew she would never be able to explain to herself just why she should be.

Moments later, they were moving down the corridor again, no one the wiser, both playing the role well.

Then Scorpius stepped into the corridor ahead of them.

* * *

**IT SMELLED OF OLD MACHINES,** lubricants and corrosion, of burnt circuitry and cooked insulation. Specialized droids, shaped like the cloaked acolytes of some dark religion clattered back and forth, feeding fusion furnaces all that fell from the chutes to their floor. They weren't sophisticated. Anything on the piles became fuel.

Stark dropped the last few motras of the chute with a grunt, slipping on the discarded parts, tumbling down the side of the pile that broke his fall and rolling across the floor. He clanged up against a bent piece of Prowler hull plating, climbed to his feet. For a moment, he despaired that he was too late – that Shiv and Thadon had already been dispatched into the the fusion plants. A glance above him showed him other lit chutes like the one he'd slid down, and he got hold of himself and made a quick survey of the deck. It took him several hundred microts, climbing and dodging droids – as they did not discriminate between alive and moving and immobile scrap, and had tried to grab him more than once.

He caught a flash of silver from the corner of his eye and jumped a broken piece of conduit to another pile.

He'd found Thadon.

The pulse shot had hit him the back of the head, created a nasty hole. Bright blue blood oozed from the wound. Kneeling down, he turned the Blade Mage over. Stark frowned, lifted the Thantados onto his shoulder and did his best to avoid the droid that scooped half the pile and rolled away. He looked hastily about, but could not see Shiv anywhere. He carried Thadon to a clear patch, laid him down.

What to do? He was past helping, past crossing over. Stark pondered. It grated against his sense of decency to simply let Thadon feed the furnaces, but he certainly couldn't haul the man's corpse around with him.

It had been folly to follow them down here.

What possessed him to chase the dead yet again? There was no real choice.

He made to rise, but was abruptly halted by the sudden grip of a strong hand on his mask.

Thadon glared back at him and Stark almost fell over from surprise.

"No..." his voice sounded as if it had not been used for some time, a great weariness on him. "Y-you're... Stark."

"I came looking for you." Thadon released his grip, and Stark steadied him. "Why – how... why aren't you dead? Your _wound._..?"

Thadon grimaced, felt the back of his head, his hand coming away slick with his pale blue blood. He sounded as if language were a new thing for him, as if he had to select each word with care, they being things foreign and strange.

"A mistake ...many have ….made in the ...past." Stark blinked. "Shivi'na?"

"I haven't found her." Thadon tried to rise, failed. Stark helped him to his feet.

"We must." Stark pointed to the furnaces. Thadon spat blood, shook his head. His vision refused to clear, his sense of smell too sharp, his nostrils burning. His mind tumbled with the thought of Shivi'na dead.

"No. She ...would not... she cannot ...die so easily. She would …refuse." He tried to take a step and Stark went with him, supporting his weight. "I will tell ...you a ...secret, Stykera. You will ...understand." His words slurred, and every word splattered and dribbled blood. "I love her, and ...I do not even ….know what that ...means."

Stark nodded.

"I remember that feeling." A great darkness reared open in him, was just as quickly closed, replaced by her gentle blue light.

_ No - no despair, no pain. I will not tarnish the gift of her life with grief. _

She was always with him; he regretted only that her sweet presence, her fragrance, her touch were so far away.

"I didn't know what it meant, either."

"You do ...now?" Thadon stumbled, Stark righted him. "Tell ...me ..._how_."

Stark stared at him. He _couldn't _articulate how he felt about Her. She was his heart and nerves and very breath, the only light to have ever shone into his wretched existence. He could only wail in his emptiness or howl with joy at being so blessed. He couldn't use worthlessly inadequate words. Thadon glared, and he felt he owed Her the attempt, at least.

"She is... _Zhaan_." He felt embarrassed, for it felt utterly and foolishly inadequate, but Thadon just lolled his head around to look the Banik in the eye. He nodded.

"Yes." He looked away. "That is ...enough. That can ...be felt as the ...truth."

Stark felt a sudden surge of affection for this "non-person". Another flash of silver drew them to another pile. A _Vengeance _comm, a silver oval. Stark released Thadon long enough to retrieve it.

_"Shivi'na!"_

Thadon somehow found the energy to call her name. Over the hiss and guttural burn-growl of the furnaces, over the clatter and scrape of the droids, Thadon called for her, and Stark knew it was unlikely that there was anyone to hear. It did not stop him from lending Thadon his voice. They called and called, and Thadon's energy seemed to drain. Stark set him down, let him sit.

"She is ...gone." Thadon said, and it sounded like the thud of a headstone falling over. "Come. I have many ...peace... keepers to ...kill." He made to rise, but merely slid to his side. Stark caught him. "I need ...only time to ...recover." He spat more blood. "Just ...more _time_."

"We cannot stay here." Stark told him. He nodded, a jerky movement of his head. His wound, Stark noted, was already closing.

"Help me. There ...must be a ...way ...out." Stark picked him up again, and avoiding droids, they tried to make their way through the piles. After a while, Thadon seemed to get stronger and Stark released him.

"We are going in circles," Stark noted after a while in frustration. "Look, your blood." He pointed to a faint blue glow on the deck, spattered across debris. No'Halladan crouched, dipped a finger in it, examined it closely. A slow smile spread across his face. He held the finger up for Stark's quizzical inspection. His other hand pointed to the glowing trail. His voice was stronger as well.

"Not my blood, Stykera." His smile grew wider. "_Shivi'na._"

Stark had to suddenly hurry to catch him.

* * *

**SARAH MARCHAND** glared at the dark-haired woman before her.

"I don't believe it," She told Sun, not moving from behind her desk. "He's giving in? That's not like him at..."

"Regardless, I need the book he gave you. He sent me to fetch it." Aeryn fixed a cold gaze on her. She admired the woman's loyalty, but she had no time for this. Sarah glared back for a few more moments, sighed, rose, said "follow me" and led her back topside, back into the intolerably warm Outback of Australia. She eyed the Prowler parked outside with professional interest for another long moment, marched off across the sandy scrub. After a few minutes, and Aeryn about to remind Sarah of Sebaceans and their heat intolerance, Sarah brought them to a halt before a large red boulder, a dead gnarled tree curled around it.

Sarah braced herself against it, called for Aeryn's help and they both pushed at it. It was lighter than it looked, but still heavy. After a moment, Sarah called a halt. Underneath the boulder was a shiny metal plate. She drew a tool from her pocket and went to work on it. After another few moments, she swung the plate up and pulled a metal box from a space beneath.

"His book," Sarah held it out. She looked at it almost wistfully.

Aeryn could understand the feeling. _Things that could have been, might be, not knowing_.

"It's the end of the world as we know it." Sarah said, more to herself.

"That's inevitable," Aeryn told her taking the book and heading back to her Prowler. Sarah fell in beside her.

"Ends aren't always bad. I guess it just depends."

"He has a plan," Aeryn told her. Sarah sent her a sharp look. Her tone was of disbelief.

"Against an alien occupation? Seems... iffy." Beside her, Aeryn's smile was rueful.

"It's not an occupation." She shook her dark tresses. "Although it will get worse before it gets better."

They drew up to the Prowler. Sarah looked at it the way she'd looked at the box containing John's book.

"It usually does. Taking that..." she pointed at the box. "...is a mistake." Aeryn climbed into the Prowler, started her quick-preflight checks.

"I agree." She pulled on her occulars, looked down at Sarah. "They've undoubtedly put a tracer on me. That means Peacekeepers will be here shortly, if they are not already on their way." The Prowler growled as she fed power to lifters. Sarah stepped back. "They will not believe anything you tell them." Aeryn called to her.

The canopy slid closed, and the Prowler was already five hundred kilometers away by the time Sarah made it back to the entrance of the base. Sarah began calling department heads as soon as she walked in the door. They had a lot of work to do, and no time to do it in.

Aeryn was in orbit before Sarah made it back to her office, and the occulars outlined the Carrier and about three hundred pieces of junk in orbit, including the ISS, and several military satellites. Aeryn parked the Prowler in orbit, and contemplated the box in lap.

Right now this was _the_ most dangerous thing for a million metras, and Aeryn knew there was no way in Hezmana she could allow it anywhere near that Carrier. She scanned the planet below, nodded to herself.

She wanted to believe him. She wanted to believe that this _was_ for the best and he knew what he was doing. She knew firsthand the horrors the Scarrans would and could inflict, she knew the stakes and she knew the odds.

Aeryn knew she could only count what was happening now, not possibilities, not maybes, no promises spoken or unspoken. Like the soldier she was, she could only stand and wait and do what was necessary.

She pointed the Prowler into space, kicked herself out of orbit, laid in a course. In the distance, the Carrier loomed.

John Crichton, she knew from experience, always had a plan.

She could only hope that this would be the one to _work_.

* * *

**HAXER GENTLY LAID THE TECH** behind the control console of the Aurora Chair out of sight, and knew he _should_ have immediately left, but his almost murderous hatred for the mechanism before him kept him a little longer. When he finished the Chair was useless, and nothing short of a complete rebuild or replacement would return it into a functional state. The section he was in housed all the storage and computing power for the Chair, and he loaded it with enough node bombs and malicious code to create a cascade effect that could disrupt power systems to this entire section. It wasn't a lot, but it was as vindictive as Hezmana, and he was satisfied with it. Unfortunately, the Chair was isolated computationally from the rest of the ship, so he could do no scans or access any ship data.

He needed something a little more central. Hax hunted for a conduit access and climbed in. As he crawled through the ship's arteries, he stopped periodically to access terminal junctions and do a bit of local reprogramming.

He sardonically wondered if 'Havoc' wouldn't be a better nickname for him, considering the amount of it his "fixes" would cause. He reached the terminus of the conduit, and grinned like a fool, felt like a man newly released from prison into a seraglio of willing bed-partners. Below him was a central trunk node, hardpoint access only for the most experienced and trusted techs. It was one of four on the Carrier, and the human equivalent would have been something analogous to a massive server/processor. He needed to find the crew, Crichton, and most importantly, Cha.

Unfortunately, it was surrounded by techs, and he was fairly certain that they would know - more or less instantly - he wasn't a member of the crew.

He needed a distraction.

* * *

**ENTIRELY ON INSTINCT** she moved, and it boded ill for anyone in her way. She'd managed the overseer office and had killed everyone present - her blades left to her since they'd have figured the dead had no use for them - unseeing, unknowing; had crawled under the consoles like an animal and waited until some semblance of functioning cognition returned. Pain had lanced through her and goaded her on, sent her to scurry somewhere dark and safe. She knew who and what she was now – more or less – now only waited for her wound to close.

_I am a moment in time reflecting on a moment in time. I am, I see, I feel, I am a place and in a place I am. _

It helped. How had she come here – yes... neural mine. Then... shot in the head. Thantados' were deceptively constructed. The trauma had sent her into a healing coma, and it could easily be mistaken for death. That was why there were so many superstitions surrounding her people – her internal configuration and regenerative abilities were designed to maximize her survivability. Muscles, nerves, bones, senses. The outside looked one way, but the inside... it was a secret – among many - that had defeated many a thought-victorious Thantados foe.

As she had told Haxer not so long ago – she may have _looked_ Sebaceanoid, but she was _not_ Sebaceanoid. She had also lost her comm at some point.

Shiv felt more like herself as the microts ticked by, felt strength and sense realign themselves. If she had been shot, Thadon had been also. If his wound was similar, he would be alive. Somehow she didn't doubt that the rest of her crew was also still alive. Any intelligent enemy would have executed them all in the most vicious manner possible and then incinerated them without delay. Yet, that never seemed to happen.

She found it very odd that it didn't.

She did not, she realized with some surprise, like the idea of Thadon being dead. She was determinedly opposed to it, in fact.

As full cognition slowly returned, she knew she had limited choices. Shiv found a way into a trunk line of pipes and conduits, rested now that she was finally out of sight. Shiv pondered her choices as she made her way nimbly through the conduit. If her crew were dead, that could mean that Scorpius could soon be in possession of wormhole knowledge and war would be forthcoming – and apocalyptic in scope. She had no reason not to believe it when Crichton had told her of the potential for destruction such phenomenon contained within them. Anything that could circumvent the standard laws of the universe was by its very nature inherently destructive. One could use a Vigilante as more than adequate transport, but that did not eliminate that the Vigilante _was_ a weapon of great destructive power. Like anything, intent mattered more than inherent properties, application over invention.

Much, she realized with a wry bit of introspection, like she herself in the last few cycles.

After several hundred microts, and feeling much more like her old self, albeit not at full capacity – it would require a Sleep to be fully healed – she judged herself several levels up, and near the medical facilities if the smell were any indication. She passed over several through the ductwork, having to backtrack several times to get past junctures too small for her to pass through.

As she passed over the last medbay on the wing, she heard … a sound. It was a moan of... a mix of pain and sadness and rage, and Shiv knew she was inadequately emotionally experienced to describe it fully, the inarticulate sound of a person on the verge of death, the sound not grieving in the going, but in that which had not been done, physical pain and regret and longing, and a sound that Shiv felt vibrate through her person, that made her throat constrict, made _her _feel it and she was out of the conduit and onto the floor of the medbay as silent as the shadow of death itself. She felt her muscles tense, her blood surge, heat and violence in her nerves. She knew from whom that unsettling moan had originated, and Shiv felt an uncharacteristic blast of volcanic anger ride hard on its heels.

She could smell blood and viscera, that hot metal smell of charged instruments, ozone crackling, the sweet-burnt smell of cooked flesh, the black-blue scent of pain, a pulse of red agony Shiv could feel on her skin.

On a blood-soaked bed, brightly lit under an unforgiving glare, Chak'sa lay, awake, aware, as a spider-like machine buzzed and hummed as it pulled her apart, stuck intrusive claws into her, sliced and cut and prodded. Shiv had locked the bay, then killed the guards watching before any of the techs had even been aware of her presence. She then demanded surcease of the medtech nearest the carnage. When she'd refused, Shiv ruthlessly and slowly killed her before the others, and made her demand again.

The machine was silenced, and Chak'sa managed to look at the Thantados with a cognition Shiv would not have thought possible. She recognized the Plea of Death, that shimmer in the eye of agony and hopelessness. A single thrust would end her friend's torment.

Shiv refused it, ordered the medtechs to undo what they had done.

One insolent tech - seemingly secure in the knowledge that Shiv stood on a shipload of enemies – insolently asked as to the consequences of their noncompliance. Without blinking those baleful orange eyes, Shiv killed her with a spike in the eye and a nitrogen-cold reiteration that no more chances would be forthcoming.

If Chak'sa died, no one in the room would long outlive her.

One medtech ventured as delicately as possible that her chances were slim, regardless. Shiv simply stared until the tech went back to work. A prowl of the bay found the Director of the Earth base in stasis – and inquiry of a tech informed her that the woman had committed suicide and it was being held in abeyance by the stasis while the poison was cleansed from her system. Shiv knew that a subject did not have to be alive to be interrogated as long as their brains were intact. The tech also surmised that the brain was probably beyond reviving as the poison the woman had used had been rather efficient. Shiv spent no more time on her and ordered the tending of Chak'sa to hasten.

Even someone as aware of her surroundings as Shiv could not monitor every variable. So it was she missed a minor medtech in an observation blister above the operations theatre, who was just now returning from a lavatory break.

The tech took one look and wasted no time hitting the alarm.

* * *

**IRIYA HEARD CRICHTON CURSE** behind her, as Scorpius looked their way. For a moment, it looked as if he would simply pass by, and he did just that, but apparently Crichton knew something she didn't, for as Scorpius got a metra behind them, she heard the half-breed begin to speak – and at the same time, an alarm sounded loudly and Crichton was wheeling about, rifle lining up and firing.

Scorpius went down from the two precise shots, techs scrambled and shouted, and Crichton kept cursing. Iriya tossed her cuffs and pulled her pistol as Crichton shoved her into the scampering throng.

_Right. _She looked like a tech.

He shouted at her only one word - "_Vengeance!"_

She hid her pistol again and ran with the rest.

Crichton bolted up the hallway, guards started firing after him, not caring that techs stood between them and their quarry. Several went down, and Crichton wove through them, used it to his advantage.

Back down the hall, he could hear Scorpius cursing the guards for their callousness. He managed a small auxiliary corridor, stopped briefly to catch his breath. At one end a junction, at the other, a trooper suddenly stopped, pointed, yelled and the chase resumed.

Crichton had just managed the end at the junction when troopers came from either end there and he could do nothing but skid to a stop, drop his weapon and raise his hands.

* * *

** HAXER GOT HIS DISTRACTION **when the alarm sounded and the techs scrambled out to their stations. He was out of his conduit and on the floor before they'd all vacated. He accessed internal scans, quickly discovering Cha and Shiv and that the _Vengeance_ was locked down. His blood ran cold at Cha's designation: Information Retrieval. She was in the medbay and he knew precisely what that meant. He quickly told the computer to rescind the order, reclassify her, argued with it a moment when it told him he didn't have the authority, and he then proceeded to rewrite the local base software to give him almost complete control over the whole section of the Carrier.

It took him all of a hundred microts.

He was preparing to unlock the Vigilante when someone shouted behind him and he turned to see a trooper coming briskly at him, rifle leveled. Haxer almost casually felled the man with straight-legged single kick to the throat, sending the trooper back down the accessway. He heard the clatter of other heavy boots and knew he had to hurry, silencing the alarm across the ship and having the computer call a cease order. He knew it wouldn't work for long. Voice commands from senior officers and likely Scorpius himself would counteract anything he did ere long. He turned back to freeing the _Vengeance_ and was so intent on it that he didn't see the tech emerge from a repair bay, see him or hit him across the head with her portable tablet, sending him staggering into a quick unconsciousness.

He also missed Iriya entering and knocking the tech out expertly with a single punch. She looked him over, judged him no worse for wear and finished what he'd started, thoroughly impressed with his skill. Not for the first time did she wonder at the amazing Disruptor he would have been. Iriya managed to get the external locks off the ship, but knew better than to wake the AI from where she was – without direct interface, the _Vengeance's_ combat protocols – and she knew Crichton had or had Haxer program such unusual protocols in – would have remained active, and the ship would have either damaged the Carrier precipitously or gotten itself destroyed, neither of which would do at this point. She'd never even heard of a ship programmed to fight for itself against a lockdown or restraint before, decided to stop being surprised at anything that maddeningly unpredictable man ever did again.

She was seriously tired of the headaches he could so readily induce. Iriya finished, sensed Miriya taking a more active interest in the outside world again, and Haxer doing the same behind her. At the moment, it had quieted down, but that would not last. She helped him up, as he groaned and rubbed the lump on his head.

"Are you injured?" she inquired as he got to his feet. Behind her the massive trunk of the node went dark. Frell. They'd traced it.

"I'll live," he told her. "We've got to get those FTA sixes and three GD scans in alignment or we'll spend an extra day cleaning junk from the scan overlap."

"We should – _what_?" He raised his head just as the alarm resumed, and the yellow lights of an internal scan snapped on and flooded the room. He grabbed her hand suddenly, started running, pulling her behind her. She pulled him up short just before he exposed them. An odd intuition flared.

"Who do you think I am?" She asked him, to his sudden smile and wry look.

"Look, Special Officer Mundari, we aren't playing this game again." She blinked. _Special Officer who? _"That's a level three localized alarm." He paused. "An intruder alarm? What the frell...? All right, let's get to Command and..."

"No!" She grabbed his hand and pulled him back. She didn't know just whom he was seeing, but she knew he wasn't seeing _her._ She had to use this, had to think quickly. He'd been a tech before, she knew that much, and that grey uniform he seemed to love had been the standard for the Research Divisions. He'd been an officer-level tech at some point. "We've been boarded! High Command wants us to abandon ship! I've already moved all pertinent data to our escape craft – don't you remember?"

For a moment, Haxer seemed confused, as if questioning the reality of his situation, and his smile faded. It came right back a moment later, however.

"We can't just run, Elish – we have a responsibility to our crew."

"We'll do what we can when get to the ship. You know how valuable our information is, don't you?"

"Yeah... yeah. All right, let's get going." He took another step, stopped, his whole face twisted in confusion again. "Wait... some ...one. There's someone we _have_ to get? She's in medbay DT999." Iriya nodded, having seen his scan list, knew he meant Chak'sa. She also knew any attempt to try and retrieve her would end in disaster.

"If she's in the medbay we'll make sure a team gets her out and to the ship, but we can't do anything useful until we get there." After another couple of tense microts, he agreed, and they started off through the systems access tubes, something of which she had become very tired of having been a necessity.

_Frelling necessities._

She plumbed hers and Miriya's memories in an attempt to uncover an "Elish Mundari", but both came up blank. She obviously meant a great deal to Haxer, given the depth and warmth of his smile, even as he had to have been obviously concerned. They'd crawled for about 200 microts when Haxer stopped, chuckled and reached into a cabinet jutting from one of the trunk lines. He pulled a tablet out, one of the maintenance ones stored throughout the lines.

"What are you doing?" she whispered harshly at him. They had no time to stop.

"I don't recognize any of these junctions," he told her. "Granted, I haven't crawled this whole monster, but that was a major trunk junction and I have been through all those. I need to get a location scan. Won't take a 'crot." He took his scan, and frowned. It deepened the more he scanned and she wasn't even remotely surprised.

"What?" she asked anyway.

"Two odd lifesigns just at the end of this tube." He looked back at her. "I don't recognize either. Scan data is fronked. Neither of these should be on this ship – they must be part of whomever's boarded us." He tucked the tablet on a hook on his belt. "There's no way around them. _Dren_!"

"I have a pistol," she ventured. "We'll take our chances."

"All right," he said after a moment. "But I'm going first and no arguments!"

She nodded, and they crawled to the hatch. She handed him the pistol and pulled back as he bade.

Haxer opened the hatch and leapt from it with a yell.

* * *

**ON THE COMMAND DECK**, Braca directed the operations to recapture their prisoners. Behind him, John ignored the flurry, and an anxious Aeryn stood behind him as he read through the book she'd brought him. Scorpius entered on a trot, guard trailing him. His armor was still smoking from where Crichton had shot him. He pointed at Braca and all made a beeline to John.

Scorpius opened his mouth, but John stopped him with,

"Nothing to do with me, Scorp. Ask King Toady."

Braca had to back him, and Scorpius' evident fury abated.

"Report!"

"Sir! We've recaptured the pirate, but the tech is still eluding us." Aeryn glanced up sharply at that. "Also, your Chair interrogation will not be possible as the subject has escaped and done something to it. The techs are trying to track the damage, but they say it's ...'phenomenal'. It may all have to be replaced."

Scorpius simply nodded, his legendary calm restored.

"Organize what's left of the on-ship troopers into search teams. Assign two scan techs per team. I want the squad watch leaders in the Beta Trunkway punished for indiscriminately killing several of my techs – they are _far_ more valuable to this mission than soldiers – and I want them punished severely, the manner of which I leave to you, Braca." A dutiful nod. "Have the techs begin immediately to return my Chair to functionality."

"Sir, when Tech Rojah said 'phenomenal', she meant _catastrophically_ so."

Scorpius was watching John read.

"Useless?"

"Very. Sorry, sir. It will require allocation and resources currently used for wormhole inquiry."

"Very well. The Chair will wait."

Another tech ran up to Braca, handed him a small tablet, retreated.

"I have to report that medbay DT999 has been locked down and gone dark. Teams have been dispatched to open it."

"How quickly chaos reigns in your proximity, John."

"Not my proxy," John told him dryly. "This is _your _goddamned show, right? _Your _concern, not mine." Scorpius' smile was cold and sardonic.

"So you say." He turned to Braca. "Was that interrogation team – the one Grayza was testing – brought on board?"

"As per your order sir - they were requisitioned before we left the Nexus."

"They are needed, Braca, now that my Chair is out of order. Tell them to assemble their equipment."

"Their subject, sir?"

Scorpius looked back at John when he said it.

"Give them the pirate. Strip him of all knowledge, any intensity required." Braca nodded, turned smartly to carry out his orders. Scorpius smiled at his next order.

"And have it vidded to Command. The crew may find it amusing." A glance back showed John seemingly unaffected, and a grim-faced Officer Sun taking a step back.

_Well, Officer, _Scorpius thought, calling for his personal tech team to tend his suit, '_contaminated' indeed._


	6. Chapter 6

**THE AIR ABOVE CHAK'SA** shimmered a faint purple-green and then dissipated. Under the light, the last of her wounds closed, and the grimace of pain on her face eased. A blood feed began to replenish her blood loss, but could only bolster her own, as her mix wasn't exactly on file.

With proper care, she _would _recover, but she doubted she'd get that unless fortune fell madly in love with her.

Shiv was aware that they'd been discovered. She would wait just long enough, she decided, however long that was.

Chak'sa felt the painkillers kick in and was quietly grateful. Although geared to Sebaceans, they would do in the short-term. She'd survived massive wounds before in the arenas – and the best stock always got the best care – but _live dissection_ was something else entirely. She knew without knowing directly that everything had gone to Hezmana, and gone there quickly too. They had to leave, and she'd be damned if she crawled or was carried.

When Chak'sa asked weakly for her armor, Shiv was not surprised nor did she argue. She commanded one of the medtechs to fetch it. When he refused, she hamstrung him, left him howling and ordered another.

The armor was fetched with alacrity. The techs were allowed to treat their comrade and then she locked them all in an office. Enough was enough and Shiv was tired of their fruitless insolence. She came back in time to see Chak'sa slowly rising, and with care, helped her sit up. As quickly - and gently - as possible, as the doors were by now starting to glow from the cutters, Shiv helped Chak'sa into the skintight bodysuit she always wore under her armor, and the gladiator stoically bore the pain it obviously caused. Her armor pieces snapped over it, and Chak'sa seemed to stand a little taller when it had all been put in place. A small row of tiny lights flared on her side piece, blinked twice and ceased.

"We will have to fight," Shiv told her, as the doors started to groan, and the power to the room was cut. In the blue emergency lighting Chak'sa nodded, seemingly stronger than before. A raised eyebrow was answered with a pain-rasped, "My armor was designed for the arenas and has a limited auto-health function. Scarran-grade painkillers are _very_ efficient. It was meant to keep us going in the pits." Chak'sa shrugged gingerly to settle her armor, knew that she would have to depend on her undersuit to keep the wound closures in place. It was self-sealing, and the side against her skin was designed to maximize her comfort. It would not stick to her wounds, but if it came into contact with a fluid, say – her blood – it would constrict, which had the benefit of pulling a wound closed. Her armor was meant to maximize her survival, not insure it.

That was up to her and her skills.

She would not die, she vowed. Not here, not alone, and not without seeing him again.

The groaning of the door abruptly stopped, as both females had tensed to leap among the soldiers who were undoubtedly on the other side. After a few microts, they shuddered open...

… and Thadon, Stark, and Haxer stepped through the door. Behind them, several dead troopers and techs littered the floor. Someone in the distance was yelling into a comm.

Haxer was carrying Iriya, who had blood gushing from a wound to her side, a huge welt on her head. He powered past them, cursed at the blue light and found an emergency bed with it's own power supply. A healing field snapped on over her and the bleeding stopped. The table extruded an automated series of servos that pumped her full of blood and flash-sutured her wound. The welt on her head was swabbed and covered.

He waited, anxious, and his agitation grew as Iriya continued to lay there unresponsive.

Seeing him, Chak'sa felt much better, and as she went to go to him, he suddenly shouted,

"She's in trouble! Where the frell are the medtechs! Get them in here! I won't let her die!" The depth of emotion halted her a few steps from him. _Such emotion for the Disruptor? What...?_

"Ander...?"

_ "Stykera!"_ The roar startled them all. "_You_ can save her!" Hax leapt past Chak'sa as if she weren't there, to grab the stunned head-shaking Banik with convulsive fist and a pulse pistol to his head. "I don't know how you people got on my ship and I don't give a dren – but you _will_ save this woman!" As he barked, he dragged Stark toward the prone Iriya. "Pull her out, save her so the machine can fix her properly! I know your kind can do that!"

Stark's horror grew as he deciphered Haxer's meaning, and he shook his head harder. He could do it, but he couldn't.

"_No, no, no_ – I can't!"

"You _can_!" The rage twisted Hax's face into something vicious. "I love her and you will save her or _I will extinguish you!_"

"But I can't hold her for long! She would be lost before we got anywhere safe!"

Hax suddenly drew in a deep, juddering breath, grabbed his head and stepped back, looked around frantically, and his friends could see comprehension war with the past and the rage in his eyes. He took in their faces, knew them and didn't, saw concern and care and deep affection and confusion from all. A part of his mind – the lucid Haxer that loved Cha, had once loved another who he knew had died long since, who was a pirate and a tech and a Decrypter without peer – he fought for control among the confusion, and he knew that his repaired mind had been scrambled and was freefalling through memories.

Thought, informed and conditioned and organized, influenced and shaped by language, needed structure. Haxer was the master of language. He _would_ master his thoughts – but now... now all he could do was kick blocks over and hope to stumble the old Ander long enough for him to see sense.

Shiv made to step forward, but Chak'sa stopped her. She knew him. She _knew_ him. He was not in his right mind, but he would work it out.

"We will trust him." was all she said.

Shiv stepped back. Thadon came close, touched her arm, his look of concern. She nodded. He did not remove his hand and she did not mind.

Haxer stumbled back, bounced off a still-powered bed. The diagnostic readout on it said "archived", and he knew what that meant. He looked to Stark, looked down for a long moment.

"Do it." he said, voice deadly cold, the old Ander, determined to save his love. The gun was steady, but the gaze was down.

"I have a place for her." He looked at Chak'sa and she nodded. He looked confused for a moment, nodded back and was gone again a moment later. But she was satisfied.

Stark stepped forward.

At the same moment, troopers charged through the open door.

* * *

**THERE WAS NOTHING ELABORATE.**

First, they locked Crichton into a device that looked to be found in any trendy fitness shop, one that stretched him out like DaVinci's _Vitruvian Man. _A very tall oblong-headed alien in a very white straight coat that went to the floor went about its tasks in no great hurry. Its eyes were vertical slits and its mouth a vague slash lower on its face. Its skin was the colour of oxidized copper. At one point Crichton thought he'd heard the short one, the disproportionately lumpy one in a green garbage bag, call it "D'g'sta". The chunky one was apparently "Blio".

There were no guards.

At least, Crichton thought with some black humour, they'd left him clothed this time. On a large screen directly in front of him, he could see the Command deck, Scorpius and Braca watching. The two-way was apparently so D'g'sta could elaborate on the procedure, provide a running commentary. Crichton wouldn't put it past Scorpius to have it two-way just for his own kicks. In the background, he could see John and Aeryn.

Hell. He admitted he was slightly disappointed to see her there. Crichton had no illusions about his current predicament. Scorp had apparently branched out from the humdrum of his Chair. He was likely either going to be mind-frelled or just out-and-out tortured so Scorpius and Johnny could get their rocks off. That Aeryn would be both a party to and witness of his torture nailed any gaps closed on the coffin of his supposed Crichtonhood.

Whatever small flame had been rekindled in him for her – and he admitted, reluctantly, that inhibitor or not, that there _had_ been one, deep deep down in the echoing cavern of his heart ….well, it had been a foolish, hopeless one, as it had been from the day of his creation, and a flame he now snuffed out with a ruthless efficiency.

If he survived this – and he certainly would if he had anything to say about it – she would share John's fate.

He thought no more on her, turned his attention to his torturers.

D'g'sta nodded as he came near, a long thin strip in his spider-fingers. He stroked it and Crichton heard something behind him hum to life. He felt prickles run across him, head to toe. A scan?

"Yes. Good." D'g'sta said in his slow, oily drawl. Behind him, Blio chittered like an old electric typewriter.

"Yes. You have strength. Much. You will last long and long." He pointed to Blio who did something that vaguely resembled a nod. "We will gauntlet you to test your tolerances." He pointed again. "Then you shall be sifted. Once sifted, you will be given an arn to rest, and sifted again."

The slit-mouth moved into something Crichton assumed was its analogue to a smile.

"You may vent your distress. There is no shame when there is no choice."

Crichton opened his mouth to retort when a white-hot knife wreathed in lightning, dipped in the most acidic of fiery acids and powered by Ultimate Wrath and Eternal Hate stabbed him in Everything and then twisted itself in a frenzied vortex of Suffering.

The unholy roar of agony that exploded from him climbed quickly to inarticulate excruciation that in itself was another kind of pain, a keening, climbing thing that could only wail and then wail for itself being in pain.

When it stopped, Crichton hung his head and wept like an inconsolable groom of a murdered bride, bawled like a child clutching the corpses of dead parents, at young love dead before a life together could even begin.

In the deepest recesses of his mind, to which he had fled in an attempt to hide, Harvey could only add his howl and watch white needles reach for him. Behind them came an abyss of darkness.

In utter desperation, Harvey ran for any refuge he could find.

Some infinitesimal part of Crichton's reptile mind – that small chunk down in his most primitive brain functions, a wedge that still knew reality yet existed, snarled and snapped and waved a metaphorical fist, for it knew, for all his supposed strength...

… his tormentors were only just getting started.

* * *

** STARK HELD ON AS LONG AS HE COULD.**

He could hear the whispers of their voices as he closed the connection between consciousnesses. Surprisingly, Miriya's came to the fore first.

**:**All right,**:** she huffed. :What in the ugly end of Hezmana is going on?:

_I'm sorry to intrude on your privacy,_ Stark told her. _I have no real choice._

:Stark? Is that you? What's the frell is happening?:

_Your other consciousness is injured. Haxer is rather insistent that she be... moved._

:The frell?:

**]**He thinks I'm this 'Elish', remember?**[** Iriya sounded clear, if far off. **]**He believes transferring my consciousness would be a good thing thanks to my injury. Funny how I can still hear everything.**[**

:Great! That would leave me in here with _the injury_!:

_And alone._

:Well ...it might not be so bad...:

**]**It's _my_ body for frok's sake! He could move _you_!**[**

:The frell!:

**]**Miriya...!**[**

:No, Iriya! This moving anyone thing is frezziked! Can't you fake it?:

_No. I think he'd know. Strange how he knows at all. Unfortunately, Iriya, your pathways are damaged and will degenerate if you stay._ _Miriya will be fine, however._

_**]**What?**[**_

:I think I get it. I am an overlay consciousness, after all. I don't share your thoughts processes, I just mirror them. Are mine damaged?:

_No. But you could not take over the body completely unless they are repaired, and that will take better facilities than we currently have access to, I'm afraid._

**]**So... Haxer was right. I _have _to be moved or I become a vegetable.**[** She would have sighed if she could have.

_Yes. I'm sorry. My only choice is the human woman Scorpius brought here._

:Akanke, I think her name was.:

_ That's her, yes._

**]**Well, it'd be only temporary, so there's no real harm, if it saves my life, yes?**[**

_It wouldn't be temporary. I can take you out of here, and I can put you in there. But once in you are in for good. A consciousness' cohesion will fragment if moved more than once. I _could _do it, but you would be quite insane by the time you return._

**]**That's just marvelous.**[** She made some inarticulate noise. **]**So I _am_ dead _unless_ I move?**[**

_ Miriya will also die with you if you do not._

:Have a nice trip!:

**]**You are not amusing!**[**

:...and you have no longer have a choice. It was a strong, healthy and rather attractive body if I recall.:

_Please decide! I have to move you soon, or..._

Out in the 'real' world, Stark lifted his mask, and his light flooded through the blue-lit room. Behind him, Haxer tapped a foot and glared.

**]**I am a Subvertor and a Disruptor and a damn fine one at that. I pledged to do what I must for my people, no matter how unpleasant. This is simply part of my pledge.**[** Silence for a moment. **]**Very well. You may proceed, Stark.**[**

:Wait a microt – won't _Akanke_ have a say in this?:

_She is dead._

]What? Won't her brain be...?[

_She had been 'archived', as Peacekeepers so callously call it._

**]**I see. Well, Miriya, you've already made this body more yours than mine. Quite honestly, and utterly frankly - I will not miss you.**[**

:Frell you.:

Both of them felt an odd pulling feeling, as if they were the glue between a label and a surface, it wasn't painful, but it gave them both a momentary and intense vertigo, a sensation of falling sideways. It seemed to last a very long time, but as if a bubble burst, Miriya felt a ringing hollowness begin to echo, and then fade. She felt the full rush of her now-exclusive body's senses, and its pain. As Iriya left, Miriya lapsed into unconsciousness, quite against her will.

For Iriya it was the oddest thing – like falling and rising at the same time, moving and not, colours and darkness twisting like frenetic ribbons around one another, a thousand voices humming and moaning and laughing and weeping and fading abruptly.

New sensations, some painful, some surprisingly pleasurable - began to wash over her as Stark began the move, but he had been wrong.

Akanke was not dead.

* * *

** ON EARTH, THEY HAD GATHERED**, satellites and ground stations had sent out high-and lowband radio transmissions, had blanketed the planet in a cacophony of white noise that scrambled television and radio, made sensors – even sophisticated ones owned by aliens – and mighty aircraft carriers had assembled off either shore. It looked for all the world like solar radiation, sunspot activity.

Their enemies had advanced technology, but they lacked one thing humans did not:

_Numbers._

Quietly, the nations with occupiers, however few, were ready. The aliens would be thrown back into space, they would know the Humans' true mettle.

In Cheyenne Mountain, military-lifer General Jeremiah Tecumseh "Tuck" Williams, recipient of a Medal of Honour, a Distinguished Service Medal, the Legion of Merit, a Distinguished Service Cross, and three Purple Hearts disarmed the nearest Peacekeeper to him and led the charge to take NORAD back.

Outside, the might of the United States was unleashed on the technological superiority of the Peacekeepers.

Men and women, human or otherwise, began to die.

* * *

** THADON AND SHIV** did a more than an adequate job of driving back the first wave of troopers. Chak'sa managed to kill two in the second wave before she fell back exhausted and in pain, felt her undersuit begin to constrict across her belly. Haxer killed another two in the third wave and then in a fit of frustrated rage managed to use a bed computer to remotely hack an emergency bulkhead door to slam down and give them a momentary respite. Stark was deep in his transfer.

They had fought for almost a full arn.

Haxer helped Chak'sa back to a bed and ordered her to rest. He seemed to be looping from one state to another with increasing rapidity. She thanked him and he apologized, to which she smiled wanly and told him,

"I understand. I always do." which got her a loving smile and a soft touch, which seemed to suffuse strength into her. It changed almost immediately and he stomped back to Stark. She sighed, tried to catch her breath. She despised feeling this weak, cursed Crichton half-heartedly for "fixing" Ander's head.

On the other side of the bulkhead door, an ominous booming began.

"I know," Haxer began, "that everything hasn't been right with me." He shook his head, as if to try and clear it. "I can't tell the past from the now sometimes. Nothing I planned..." He smirked ruefully, looked at Miriya and then to Akanke. "But I saved her, I think..."

Stark's light flared, then faded, and he put his mask back, staggered away from the table. Miriya jerked convulsively on the bed and went still. The supposedly dead woman twitched and Haxer smiled.

Miriya chose then to cough into life, and Haxer looked rather startled. _Ander_ didn't know about Miriya, and he was more than a little shocked when she bade him over, slapped him weakly and demanded he "get a solid grip on himself." He didn't. Inside his head he reeled away in confusion, and Haxer chose his moment.

"Okay – this is frelling strange. I think I get how she lives – lived." He thrust a thumb at Miriya, crossed to Chak'sa, bringing a field-grade medkit. "I'm sorry, Cha – I am and am not myself, although I am both of me." He smiled, she returned it, touched her face gently. "I will get you out of here."

"You may not," she told him.

"That bad?"

"It can be. Easily."

He looked directly into her eyes.

"_I love you,_ Chak'sa Nev'reel Hadreeth Edare'al Bavmorda. I _will_ get you out of here. We'll go to the Derdannan Fire Caves and I will shout your name over the Echoing Sea."

"Do not make promises you cannot keep, little man." She told him with a smile, pulled him close and kissed him and he knew then how she felt, with no uncertainty.

"I never do."

"No. But your timing is abominable." She coughed.

He laughed, injected a stabilizing agent to help speed her healing process.

"There is that." He told her most seriously, "I am going to try and stay as long as I can."

"I am glad you have reached an accord," Shiv said from behind them. "While we may have temporarily stopped them, we have definitely trapped ourselves."

"Well, you two could escape." Miriya, still weak, the bed doing its best.

"I'm tired of conduit," Thadon said dryly. Beside him, Shiv crossed her arms and nodded.

"I will not go quietly," Chak'sa muttered. Beside her, Haxer squeezed her hand in agreement.

"Any weapons?" Miriya asked. She winced her way into a sitting position.

Stark held up the weapons of the Peacekeepers killed in the initial wave. Miriya bade him adjust her bed to face the door and give her one.

"None of us," he said softly, "Will go quietly."

The booming got louder.

* * *

**ON COMMAND,** when he screamed, Aeryn had to fight the impulse to run, to attack. When it had finally ended after an eternity, and he had broken into his abject weeping, her own eyes she found full of tears, which she hastily blinked away, lest they be seen, misconstrued, used against her.

When they began again, she had long since had enough. When John didn't react, didn't demand its surcease, she took another step away from him.

She never forgave him this moment. Never.

She endured for nearly the full arn, swearing to herself that_ this _she would remember, she would not look away from this pain.

She owed him that much.

When they stopped, when they called for his "arn of rest", she felt grim and tired, and defeated. The pirate was hanging limply in the rig, his breathing ragged and shallow. He'd almost instantly lapsed into unconsciousness.

Casting a surreptitious glance around Command, she saw veiled repulsion, was glad she was not alone. She looked back to see John looking at her. He was pale, wan, dark and hollow-eyed. He looked away, looked back, nodded once, more to himself.

Aeryn took another step away, her eyes gone cold and hard.

_Yes, John._ She thought at him, _There's always a price to pay. I don't know how you can bear it, but I cannot do this any longer._

"Permission to leave Command," she directed at John. Scorpius looked at her as she said it.

"I would have thought you made of sterner stuff, Officer Sun." His voice was layered with disdain. Crichton groaned weakly on the monitor.

"I'm a soldier," she said with no small pride. "Not some Scarran creature to take pleasure in another's pointless pain."

Scorpius blinked at that, and she was satisfied her barb struck home. Crichton groaned again.

"Aeryn... don't." John asked her. "I need you here." She shook her head at him.

"I've gone _native_," she said with a trace of bitterness. "I won't listen to any more of that."

John looked sad for a moment, sighed, went back to his book. She turned away.

"Give her quarters. Escort her there." Scorpius ordered, and she marched away gratefully. When she had left, Scorpius walked to where John sat, and his voice brooked no argument.

"We are done with this, John. The lab is ready. Go now. Start now. No more prevarication. Even after all I've showed you... _no_. Give me what I need. Or I _will_ put Officer Sun where he is now." He nodded back to the moaning figure on the screen.

John gazed out the door through which Aeryn had departed, to the screen over Scorpius' shoulder. His illusion of any control over how he would proceed had dissipated. It had gone to hell on rails and there was nothing but the yowling pit yawning before him.

"I need to know the current state of the wormhole. I need prime weapon-grade materials." He said after a while.

"We have small probes for that very purpose. All the materiel in this ship is at your disposal. You will have a team of a hundred techs exclusively for your use." He waved a woman over in a newer style grey uniform. She had red shoulder boards. "Tech Captain Ereel will oversee it. Go with her."

John hauled himself to his feet, glanced at the woman before him and walked away. She nodded to Scorpius and followed the morose human.

When John had gone, Scorpius ordered the screen silenced. It had served its purpose. More than a few people were relieved. More than a few silently added that to the long list of reasons to hate the half-breed.

"Braca – isolate him. He is to have no distractions. He will be told only what he needs to know. Until he gives me the knowledge."

Braca saluted.

"And then, Sir?"

"And then? We shall test _his _pain tolerances, and _take_ the rest."

* * *

**IRIYA FOUND HERSELF IN FOG-GRAY PLACE**, that reverberated and seemed to hum-speak with emotions. There was nothing as articulate as language, but it _was_ speech, feelings as language, a snippet of girlish delight over a favourite toy there, a beloved pet, a young woman's quite-justified healthy feminine lust for a pretty boy over there. The pains and intrigues and loves and losses of a woman's life floated serenely – even the sad and violent emotions just ebbed and flowed with a lazy motion.

She was, she suddenly knew, watching someone die, that last synaptic fade before dissolution. It unsettled Iriya in a way she could not fully grasp. An inarticulate primal fear asked her if the mere presence of this end might not take her with it...

_Was that a voice over there? An actual voice?_

**}**_**Youdontbelongherewhoareyou?**_**{** it said in a staccato burst of fear.

]I mean you no harm.[ She tried to soothe, to reassure. She was not good at it, she knew.

**}****I was Jocasta Akanke****{ ** The voice slowed. The fear ebbed. **}****I am dead****{** It sounded wise, wry, then. Strong. **}****Or nearly so****{**

]Yes. I am sorry. We thought you were gone...[

** }Who were you{**

]You would have known me as Miriya. I am actually Iriya.[

**}A double agent{**

]Yes.[

**}We would have called you a sleeper agent{ }Hidden in{ ** She cut off. The fog swirled. **}I am fading wherewill I go{**

]I am here. You are not alone.[

**}Take it{ }Please protectmy home{**

]I cannot give you any oaths. So much is uncertain.[

** }so I give you a life{**

]Thank you.[

The fog grew more dense, but seemed to be moving away. Iriya only listened out of respect and said no more.

** }Morganyouarefine you I loved you oh why{ **

** }Did knowmomma I am keepingyousafe{**

**}I AM NOT AFRAI**

* * *

** ON COMMAND, **Braca cursed. Scorpius heard him.

"Braca?"

"Sir. The humans have attacked out ground forces. In force." He looked concerned. "They are requesting Carrier support, Sir."

That meant orbital bombardment. Frag Cannons. Scorpius pondered all of five microts.

"By all means. I have all I came for already. It is time the humans learned our full power." He shook his head in mock pity. "Such a stubborn race of misfits."

Scorpius took his leave of Command.

"I am going to take a rest period, Braca. Report when this little 'insurrection' is quelled. Fire when in position."

"Yes, sir." He watched Scorpius leave, frowned. It certainly wasn't the first planet he'd ever bombarded, but this one... it just didn't feel right, somehow. He shook it off after a moment, looked to the Cannon Control Station.

"All crews stand ready for planetary bombardment. Gather coordinates, prime Cannon movers. Clear the tracks!"

The crew sprang into action and Braca watched the brown-blue planet turn slowly below. A pity. One shot could decimate a hundred motras square. The Cannon were designed for sheer firepower, not precision of shot.

Braca had seven targets. Five were major inhabited locales.

Millions of humans were about to die.

* * *

**THE MONITOR SCANNED THEM AS THEY APPROACHED.**

They were tiny, and it let them pass to enter the Aperture. Only tiny self-propelled sensor platforms, limited in scope and sophistication. Minor energy sensors. For one hundred and forty-six minutes, they had been speeding back and forth and the Monitor stopped giving them much more than cursory mandatory scans as they passed.

When the Carrier suddenly registered a massive power buildup, it ignored them completely, directed its scans to the huge vessel. A subsurface scan traced energy flows and patterns, counted reactors and shunts and switches and determined that the vehicle was about to fire its main weapon platforms.

That was unacceptable.

The Monitor took all of 1.4 seconds to decide, select and load its solution.

The weapon it then fired would end any attempt by the Carrier to strike the planet below it decisively. No shielding, shunting or evasive technology nor early detection equipment the Carrier would have would prevent the weapon from achieving its purpose. There was nowhere it could flee to, and nowhere it could hide from this solution.

The Peacekeepers would be stopped and stopped with an inescapable finality.

It calculated four minutes to range and detonation.

* * *

**TO BE CONTINUED…**

**_NEXT TIME ON _**

**_FARSCAPE - FREEBOOTER:_**

**SLEDGEHAMMER – ASHES TO ASHES**


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